OF  ALL  THINGS 

ROBERT  C,  BENCHLEY 


THIS  BOOK  MUST  BE  KEPT  IN 

STUDIO    DURING   WORKING 

HOURS  AVAILABLE  FOR  CALL. 


807.73 


Rob't 


Of  all   things. 


»T=  BORROWER'S   NAME  RETU, 


t 


807.73 


6116 


Benchley,  Rob»t 
Of  all   things 


LIBKARY  OF  , 

/     *        ' 

WALT  DK^FY  S^Ur;o 


o 
o 

0 

j= 

8 

Q 

« 

^ 

1 

^    « 

s 

•i 

0 

g 

0) 

03 

7 

,3 

>> 

S 

3 

3 

^   ' 

CD 

>< 

2 

01     ! 

3 

c3 

Ni/ 

1J 

1 

Q 

Of) 

3 
0 

S3 
C8 

"S 

ttf 

O 

1-1   '; 
0   1 

ts 

0) 

§ 
M 

^ 

K 
P3 

CT 

S 

0 

'a 

§ 
o 

1 

<1 

a 

1 
(-' 

5 

er' 

00 
00 

uo" 

"Zi 
|: 

|d 

s 

s 

a 

OJ 

S 
S{ 

b 

jk 

~  t 

O 

PH 

be 

"_£> 

Robert 

CH 
^ 

S3 

o 

1 

CQ 

cS 

c 

o 

* 

2 

3 
'# 

4) 

S 
O 

bO 

0 

^ 

'o 

a> 

> 

rt 

E3 

e 

CJ 
'c. 

W 
I 

Harvard  wi 

JH 

0 

Q 

c  ' 

£ 

PS 

a 

rt 

rt 

1 

£ 

1*S||* 


o<*--Sb^^'3ro£«^^so 

sJ*-8«i:^o-8S|;-; 


OF   ALL  THINGS 


BY 


ROBERT  C.  BENCHLEY 


64.3 1 


NEW  YORK 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

1921 


COPYRIGHT,  1921, 

BY 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


PRINTED   IN   THE   U.  S.  A.  BY 

ftt  (Sutnn  &  JSotim  Componp 


3503 
Gtf£* 

mi 


10 

HENRY  BESSEMER 

Without  whose  tireless  patience,  unswerving 
industry  and  inexhaustible  zeal  the  Bessemer 
steel  converter  would  never  have  become  a 
reality,  this  book  is  affectionately  dedicated  by 

THE  AUTHOR. 


These  sketches  appeared  originally  in  Vanity  Fair,  The 
New  York  Tribune  Sunday  Magazine,  Collier's  Weekly, 
Life,  and  Motor  Print,  all  but  two  of  these  magazines 
immediately  afterward  having  either  discontinued  pub- 
lication or  changed  hands.  To  those  which  are  old 
enough  to  remember,  and  to  the  new  managements  of 
the  others,  the  author  offers  grateful  acknowledgment  for 
permission  to  reprint  the  material  in  this  book.  (As  a 
matter  of  fact,  permission  was  never  asked,  but  they 
probably  won't  mind  anyway.) 


PREFACE 

WHEN,  in  the  Course  of  human  events,  it  becomes 
necessary  for  one  people  to  dissolve  the  political  bands 
which  have  connected  them  with  another,  and  to  assume 
among  the  powers  of  the  earth,  the  separate  and  equal 
station  to  which  the  Laws  of  Nature  and  of  Nature's 
God  entitle  them,  a  decent  respect  to  the  opinions  of 
mankind  requires  that  they  should  declare  the  causes 
which  impel  them  to  the  separation. 

We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident, — that  all  men 
are  created  equal,  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator 
with  certain  unalienable  Rights;  that  among  these  are 
Life,  Liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  Happiness.  That  to 
secure  these  rights,  Governments  are  instituted  among 
Men,  deriving  their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the 
governed, — That  whenever  any  Form  of  Government  be- 
comes destructive  of  these  ends,  it  is  the  Right  of  the 
People  to  alter  or  to  abolish  it,  and  to  institute  new 
Government,  laying  its  foundation  on  such  principles 
and  organizing  its  powers  in  such  form,  as  to  them  shall 
seem  most  likely  to  effect  their  Safety  and  Happiness. 
Prudence,  indeed,  will  dictate  that  Governments  long 
established  should  not  be  changed  for  light  and  transient 
causes;  and  accordingly  all  experience  hath  shewn,  that 
mankind  are  more  disposed  to  suffer,  while  evils  are  suf- 
ferable,  than  to  right  themselves  by  abolishing  the  forms 
to  which  they  are  accustomed.  But  when  a  long  train 


viii  PREFACE 

of  abuses  and  usurpations,  pursuing  invariably  the  same 
Object,  evinces  a  design  to  reduce  them  under  absolute 
Despotism,  it  is  their  right,  it  is  their  duty,  to  throw  off 
such  Government,  and  to  provide  new  Guards  for  their 
own  future  security.  Such  has  been  the  patient  suf- 
ferance of  these  Colonies;  and  such  is  now  the  necessity 
which  constrains  them  to  alter  their  former  Systems  of 
Government.  The  history  of  the  present  King  of  Great 
Britain  is  a  history  of  repeated  injuries  and  usurpations, 
all  having  in  direct  object  the  establishment  of  an  abso- 
lute Tyranny  over  these  States.  To  prove  this,  let  Facts 
be  submitted  to  a  candid  world. 

R.  C.  B. 

"The  Rookery" 
Breeming  Downs 
Wippet-cum-Twyne 
New  York  City 
August  24,  1921 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGB 

I    THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  THE  NEWT  .     .  3 

II    "  COFFEE,  MEGG  AND  ILK,  PLEASE  "  10 

III  WHEN    GENIUS    REMAINED    YOUR 

HUMBLE  SERVANT 18 

IV  THE  TORTURES  OF  WEEK-END  VISIT- 

ING      .  32 

V    GARDENING  NOTES      .     .     .     .     »  43 
VI    LESSON  NUMBER  ONE     .     ...  52 
VII    THOUGHTS  ON  FUEL  SAVING  ...  65 
VIII    NOT  ACCORDING  TO  HOYLE     ...  77 
IX    FROM  NINE  TO  FIVE   .....  89 
X    TURNING  OVER  A  NEW  LEDGER  LEAF  102 
XI    A  PIECE  OF  ROAST  BEEF  ....  no 
XII    THE  COMMUNITY  MASQUE  AS  A  SUB- 
STITUTE FOR  WAR    121 

XIII  CALL  FOR  MR.  KENWORTHY!     .     .  130 

XIV  FOOTBALL;  COURTESY  OF  MR.  MORSE  142 
XV    A  LITTLE  DEBIT  IN  YOUR  TONNEAU  153 

XVI    A  ROMANCE  IN  ENCYCLOPAEDIA  LAND  161 
XVII    THE   PASSING   OF   THE   ORTHODOX 

PARADOX      .     .     .•    ^     .     .     .  168 
ix 


x  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER.  PAGE 

XVIII    SHAKESPEARE  EXPLAINED     .     .     .  175 

XIX    THE  SCIENTIFIC  SCENARIO     .     .     .  180 
XX    THE  MOST  POPULAR  BOOK  OF  THE 

MONTH 187 

XXI    CHRISTMAS  AFTERNOON   .     .     .     .  193 

XXII    HAIL,  VERNAL  EQUINOX!       .     .     .  200 

TABLOID  EDITIONS 

THE  AMERICAN  MAGAZINE   .     .     .  213 

HARPER'S  MAGAZINE 220 

THE  SATURDAY  EVENING  POST    .     .  228 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  THE  NEWT 

IT  is  not  generally  known  that  the  newt,  although 
one  of  the  smallest  of  our  North  American  ani- 
mals, has  an  extremely  happy  home-life.    It  is  just 
one  of  those  facts  which  never  get  bruited  about. 


"Since  that  time  I  have  practically  lived  among  the  newts." 

I  first  became  interested  in  the  social  phenomena 
of  newt  life  early  in  the  spring  of  1913,  shortly 
after  I  had  finished  my  researches  in  sexual  differ- 
entiation among  ameba.  Since  that  time  I  have 
practically  lived  among  newts,  jotting  down  observa- 
tions, making  lantern-slides,  watching  them  in  their 
work  and  in  their  play  (and  you  may  rest  assured 
that  the  little  rogues  have  their  play — as  who  does 
not?)  until,  from  much  lying  in  a  research  posture 
on  my  stomach,  over  the  inclosure  in  which  they 
were  confined,  I  found  myself  developing  what  I 
[3] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

feared  might  be  rudimentary  creepers.  And  so,  late 
this  autumn,  I  stood  erect  and  walked  into  my  house, 
where  I  immediately  set  about  the  compilation  of  the 
notes  I  had  made. 

So  much  for  the  non-technical  introduction.  The 
remainder  of  this  article  bids  fair  to  be  fairly  scien- 
tific. 

In  studying  the  more  intimate  phases  of  newt  life, 
one  is  chiefly  impressed  with  the  methods  by  means 
of  which  the  males  force  their  attentions  upon  the 
females,  with  matrimony  as  an  object.  For  the  newt 
is,  after  all,  only  a  newt,  and  has  his  weaknesses 
just  as  any  of  the  rest  of  us.  And  I,  for  one,  would 
not  have  it  different.  There  is  little  enough  fun  hi 
the  world  as  it  is. 

The  peculiar  thing  about  a  newt's  courtship  is 
its  restraint.  It  is  carried  on,  at  all  times,  with 
a  minimum  distance  of  fifty  paces  (newt  measure) 
between  the  male  and  the  female.  Some  of  the 
bolder  males  may  now  and  then  attempt  to  over- 
step the  bounds  of  good  sportsmanship  and  crowd 
in  to  forty-five  paces,  but  such  tactics  are  frowned 
upon  by  the  Rules  Committee.  To  the  eye  of  an 
uninitiated  observer,  the  pair  might  be  dancing  a  few 
of  the  more  open  figures  of  the  minuet. 

The  means  employed  by  the  males  to  draw  the 
attention  and  win  the  affection  of  those  of  the  op- 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  THE  NEWT 

posite  sex  (females)  are  varied  and  extremely  strate- 
gic. Until  the  valuable  researches  by  Strudlehoff  in 
1887  (in  his  "  Entwickelungsmechanik ")  no  one 
had  been  able  to  ascertain  just  what  it  was  that  the 
male  newt  did  to  make  the  female  see  anything 
in  him  worth  throwing  herself  away  on.  It  had  been 
observed  that  the  most  personally  unattractive  newt 
could  advance  to  within  fifty  paces  of  a  female  of 
his  acquaintance  and,  by  some  coup  d'oeil,  bring  her 
to  a  point  where  she  would,  in  no  uncertain  terms, 
indicate  her  willingness  to  go  through  with  the  mar- 
riage ceremony  at  an  early  date. 

It  was  Strudlehoff  who  discovered,  after  watch- 
ing several  thousand  courting  newts  under  a  mag- 
nifying lens  (questionable  taste  on  his  part,  with- 
out doubt,  but  all  is  fair  in  pathological  love)  that 
the  male,  during  the  courting  season  (the  season 
opens  on  the  tenth  of  March  and  extends  through 
the  following  February,  leaving  about  ten  days  for 
general  overhauling  and  redecorating)  gives  forth 
a  strange,  phosphorescent  glow  from  the  center  of 
his  highly  colored  dorsal  crest,  somewhat  similar  in 
effect  to  the  flash  of  a  diamond  scarf-pin  in  a  red 
necktie.  This  glow,  according  to  Strudlehoff,  so 
fascinates  the  female  with  its  air  of  elegance  and 
indication  of  wealth,  that  she  immediately  falls  a 
victim  to  its  lure. 

[51 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

But  the  little  creature,  true  to  her  sex-instinct, 
does  not  at  once  give  evidence  that  her  morale  has 
been  shattered.  She  affects  a  coyness  and  lack  of 
interest,  by  hitching  herself  sideways  along  the  bot- 
tom of  the  aquarium,  with  her  head  turned  over  her 
right  shoulder  away  from  the  swain.  A  trained  ear 
might  even  detect  her  whistling  in  an  indifferent 
manner. 

The  male,  in  the  meantime,  is  flashing  his  gleamer 
frantically  two  blocks  away  and  is  performing  all 
sorts  of  attractive  feats,  calculated  to  bring  the  lady 
newt  to  terms.  I  have  seen  a  male,  in  the  stress 
of  his  handicap  courtship,  stand  on  his  fore-feet, 
gesticulating  in  amorous  fashion  with  his  hind  feet 
in  the  air.  Franz  Ingehalt,  in  his  "Uber  Welt- 
schmerz  des  Newt,"  recounts  having  observed  a  dis- 
tinct and  deliberate  undulation  of  the  body,  begin- 
ning with  the  shoulders  and  ending  at  the  filament 
of  the  tail,  which  might  well  have  been  the  origin 
of  what  is  known  to-day  in  scientific  circles  as  "  the 
shimmy."  The  object  seems  to  be  the  same,  except 
that  in  the  case  of  the  newt,  it  is  the  male  who  is 
the  active  agent. 

In  order  to  test  the  power  of  observation  in  the 

male  during  these  manceuvers,  I  carefully  removed 

the  female,  for  whose  benefit  he  was  undulating,  and 

put  in  her  place,  in  slow  succession,  another  (but 

[6] 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  THE  NEWT 

less  charming)  female,  a  paper-weight  of  bronze 
shaped  like  a  newt,  and,  finally,  a  common  rubber 
eraser.  From  the  distance  at  which  the  courtship 
was  being  carried  on,  the  male  (who  was,  it  must 
be  admitted,  a  bit  near-sighted  congenitally)  was 
unable  to  detect  the  change  in  personnel,  and  con- 
tinued, even  in  the  presence  of  the  rubber  eraser, 
to  gyrate  and  undulate  in  a  most  conscientious  man- 
ner, still  under  the  impression  that  he  was  making 
a  conquest. 

At  last,  worn  out  by  his  exertions,  and  disgusted 
at  the  meagerness  of  the  reaction  on  the  eraser, 
he  gave  a  low  cry  of  rage  and  despair  and  stag- 
gered to  a  nearby  pan  containing  barley-water,  from 
which  he  proceeded  to  drink  himself  into  a  gross 
stupor. 

Thus,  little  creature,  did  your  romance  end,  and 
who  shall  say  that  its  ending  was  one  whit  less  tragic 
than  that  of  Camille?  Not  I,  for  one.  ...  In  fact, 
the  two  cases  are  not  at  all  analogous. 

And  now  that  we  have  seen  how  wonderfully  Na- 
ture works  in  the  fulfilment  of  her  laws,  even  among 
her  tiniest  creatures,  let  us  study  for  a  minute  a 
cross-section  of  the  community-life  of  the  newt.  It 
is  a  life  full  of  all  kinds  of  exciting  adventure,  from 
weaving  nests  to  crawling  about  in  the  sun  and 
catching  insect  larvae  and  crustaceans.  The  newt's 
[71 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

day  is  practically  never  done,  largely  because  the 
insect  larvae  multiply  three  million  times  as  fast  as 
the  newt  can  possibly  catch  and  eat  them.  And  it 
takes  the  closest  kind  of  community  team-work  in 
the  newt  colony  to  get  things  anywhere  near  cleaned 
up  by  nightfall. 

It  is  early  morning,  and  the  workers  are  just 
appearing,  hurrying  to  the  old  log  which  is  to  be 
the  scene  of  their  labors.  What  a  scampering! 
What  a  bustle!  Ah,  little  scamperers!  Ah,  little 
bustlers!  How  lucky  you  are,  and  how  wise!  You 
work  long  hours,  without  pay,  for  the  sheer  love 
of  working.  An  ideal  existence,  I'll  tell  the  scien- 
tific world. 

Over  here  on  the  right  of  the  log  are  the  Master 
Draggers.  Of  all  the  newt  workers,  they  are  the 
most  futile,  which  is  high  praise  indeed.  Come, 
let  us  look  closer  and  see  what  it  is  that  they  are 
doing. 

The  one  in  the  lead  is  dragging  a  bit  of  gurry  out 
from  the  water  and  up  over  the  edge  into  the  sun- 
light. Following  him,  in  single  file,  come  the  rest 
of  the  Master  Draggers.  They  are  not  dragging 
anything,  but  are  sort  of  helping  the  leader  by 
crowding  against  him  and  eating  little  pieces  out 
of  the  filament  of  his  tail. 

And  now  they  have  reached  the  top.  The  leader, 
[8] 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  THE  NEWT 

by  dint  of  much  leg-work,  has  succeeded  in  dragging 
his  prize  to  the  ridge  of  the  log. 

The  little  workers,  reaching  the  goal  with  their 
precious  freight,  are  now  giving  it  over  to  the 
Master  Pushers,  who  have  been  waiting  for  them  in 
the  sun  all  this  while.  The  Master  Pushers'  work 
is  soon  accomplished,  for  it  consists  simply  in  push- 
ing the  piece  of  gurry  over  the  other  side  of  the 
log  until  it  falls  with  a  splash  into  the  water,  where 
it  is  lost. 

This  part  of  their  day's  task  finished,  the  tiny 
toilers  rest,  clustered  together  in  a  group,  waving 
their  heads  about  from  side  to  side,  as  who  should 
say:  "There — that's  done!  "  And  so  it  is  done, 
my  little  Master  Draggers  and  my  little  Master 
Pushers,  and  well  done,  too.  Would  that  my  own 
work  were  as  clean-cut  and  as  satisfying. 

And  so  it  goes.  Day  in  and  day  out,  the  busy 
army  of  newts  go  on  making  the  world  a  better 
place  in  which  to  live.  They  have  their  little  trials 
and  tragedies,  it  is  true,  but  they  also  have  their 
fun,  as  any  one  can  tell  by  looking  at  a  logful  of 
sleeping  newts  on  a  hot  summer  day. 

And,  after  all,  what  more  has  life  to  offer? 


[9] 


II 

"  COFFEE,  MEGG  AND  ILK,  PLEASE  " 

GIVE  me  any  topic  in  current  sociology,  such 
as  "The  Working  Classes  vs.  the  Working 
Classes,"  or  "  Various  Aspects  of  the  Minimum 
Wage,"  and  I  can  talk  on  it  with  considerable  con- 
fidence. I  have  no  hesitation  in  putting  the  Work- 
ingman,  as  such,  in  his  place  among  the  hewers  of 
wood  and  drawers  of  water — a  necessary  adjunct 
to  our  modern  life,  if  you  will,  but  of  little  real 
consequence  in  the  big  events  of  the  world. 

But  when  I  am  confronted,  in  the  flesh,  by  the 
"  close  up  "  of  a  workingman  with  any  vestige  of 
authority,  however  small,  I  immediately  lose  my 
perspective — and  also  my  poise.  I  become  servile, 
almost  cringing.  I  feel  that  my  modest  demands  on 
his  time  may,  unless  tactfully  presented,  be  offensive 
to  him  and  result  in  something,  I  haven't  been  able 
to  analyze  just  what,  perhaps  public  humiliation. 

For  instance,  whenever  I  enter  an  elevator  in  a 

public  building  I  am  usually  repeating  to  myself  the 

number  of  the  floor  at  which  I  wish  to  alight.    The 

elevator  man  gives  the  impression  of  being  a  social 

[10] 


"COFFEE,  MEGG  AND  ILK" 

worker,  filling  the  job  just  for  that  day  to  help 
out  the  regular  elevator  man,  and  I  feel  that  the 
least  I  can  do  is  to  show  him  that  I  know  what's 
what.  So  I  don't  tell  him  my  floor  number  as  soon 
as  I  get  in.  Only  elderly  ladies  do  that.  I  keep 
whispering  it  over  to  myself,  thinking  to  tell  it  to 
the  world  when  the  proper  time  comes.  But  then 
the  big  question  arises — what  is  the  proper  time? 
If  I  want  to  get  out  at  the  eighteenth  floor,  should 
I  tell  him  at  the  sixteenth  or  the  seventeenth?  I 
decide  on  the  sixteenth  and  frame  my  lips  to  say, 
"Eighteen  out,  please."  (Just  why  one  should 
have  to  add  the  word  "  out "  to  the  number  of  the 
floor  is  not  clear.  When  you  say  "  eighteen  "  the 
obvious  construction  of  the  phrase  is  that  you  want 
to  get  out  at  the  eighteenth  floor,  not  that  you 
want  to  get  in  there  or  be  let  down  through  the 
flooring  of  the  car  at  that  point.  However,  you'll 
find  the  most  sophisticated  elevator  riders,  namely, 
messenger  boys,  always  adding  the  word  "  out,"  and 
it  is  well  to  follow  what  the  messenger  boys  do  in 
such  matters  if  you  don't  want  to  go  wrong.) 

So  there  I  am,  mouthing  the  phrase,  "  Eighteen 
out,  please,"  as  we  shoot  past  the  tenth — eleventh — 
twelfth — thirteenth  floors.  Then  I  begin  to  get 
panicky.  Supposing  that  I  should  forget  my  lines!) 
Or  that  I  should  say  them  too  soon!  Or  too  late! 
[ii] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

We  are  now  at  the  fifteenth  floor.  I  clear  my  throat. 
Sixteen !  Hoarsely  I  murmur,  "  Eighteen  out." 
But  at  the  same  instant  a  man  with  a  cigar  in  his 
mouth  bawls,  "  Seventeen  out!  "  and  I  am  not  heard. 


'At  the  same  instant  a  man  with  a  cigar  in  his  mouth  bawls, 
'  Seventeen  out ! '  " 


The  car  stops  at  seventeen,  and  I  step  confidentially 
up  to  the  elevator  man  and  repeat,  with  an  attempt 
at  nonchalance,  "  Eighteen  out,  please."  But  just 
as  I  say  the  words  the  door  clangs,  drowning  out 
my  request,  and  we  shoot  up  again.  I  make  an- 
other attempt,  but  have  become  inarticulate  and 
succeed  only  in  making  a  noise  like  a  man  stran- 

[12] 


"COFFEE,  MEGG  AND  ILK" 

gling.  And  by  this  time  we  are  at  the  twenty-first 
floor  with  no  relief  in  sight.  Shattered,  I  retire  to 
the  back  of  the  car  and  ride  up  to  the  roof  and 
down  again,  trying  to  look  as  if  I  worked  in  the 
building  and  had  to  do  it,  however  boresome  it 
might  be.  On  the  return  trip  I  don't  care  what 
the  elevator  man  thinks  of  me,  and  tell  him  at 
every  floor  that  I,  personally,  am  going  to  get  off 
at  the  eighteenth,  no  matter  what  any  one  else 
in  the  car  does.  I  am  dictatorial  enough  when  I 
am  riled.  It  is  only  in  the  opening  rounds  that  I 
hug  the  ropes. 

My  timidity  when  dealing  with  minor  officials 
strikes  me  first  in  my  voice.  I  have  any  number 
of  witnesses  who  will  sign  statements  to  the  effect 
that  my  voice  changed  about  twelve  years  ago,  and 
that  in  ordinary  conversation  my  tone,  if  not  espe- 
cially virile,  is  at  least  consistent  and  even.  But 
when,  for  instance,  I  give  an  order  at  a  soda  foun- 
tain, if  the  clerk  overawes  me  at  all,  my  voice  breaks 
into  a  yodel  that  makes  the  phrase  "Coffee,  egg  and 
milk  "  a  pretty  snatch  of  song,  but  practically  worth- 
less as  an  order. 

If  the  soda  counter  is  lined  with  customers  and 

the  clerks  so  busy  tearing  up  checks  and  dropping 

them  into  the  toy  banks  that  they  seem  to  resent 

any  call  on  their  drink-mixing  abilities,  I  might  just 

[13] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

as  well  save  time  and  go  home  and  shake  up  an  egg 
and  milk  for  myself,  for  I  shall  not  be  waited  on 
until  every  one  else  has  left  the  counter  and  they 
are  putting  the  nets  over  the  caramels  for  the  night. 
I  know  that.  I've  gone  through  it  too  many  times 
to  be  deceived. 

For  there  is  something  about  the  realization  that 
I  must  shout  out  my  order  ahead  of  some  one  else 
that  absolutely  inhibits  my  shouting  powers.  I  will 
stand  against  the  counter,  fingering  my  ten-cent 
check  and  waiting  for  the  clerk  to  come  near  enough 
for  me  to  tell  him  what  I  want,  while,  in  the  mean- 
time, ten  or  a  dozen  people  have  edged  up  next  to 
me  and  given  their  orders,  received  their  drinks 
and  gone  away.  Every  once  in  a  while  I  catch  a 
clerk's  eye  and  lean  forward  murmuring,  "  Coffee  " 
— but  that  is  as  far  as  I  get.  Some  one  else  has 
shoved  his  way  in  and  shouted,  "  Coca-Cola,"  and 
I  draw  back  to  get  out  of  the  way  of  the  vichy  spray. 
(Incidentally,  the  men  who  push  their  way  in  and 
footfault  on  their  orders  always  ask  for  "  Coca- 
Cola."  Somehow  it  seems  like  painting  the  lily  for 
them  to  order  a  nerve  tonic.) 

I  then  decide  that  the  thing  for  me  to  do  is  to 

speak  up  loud  and  act  brazenly.    So  I  clear  my 

throat,  and,  placing  both  hands  on  the  counter,  emit 

what  promises  to  be  a  perfect  bellow:  "  COFFEE, 

[14] 


"COFFEE,  MEGG  AND  ILK" 


'Placing  both  hands  on  the  counter,  I  emit  what  promises  to  be 
a  perfect  bellow." 


[151 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

MEGG  AND  ILK."  This  makes  just  about  the 
impression  you'd  think  it  would,  both  on  my  neigh- 
bors and  the  clerk,  especially  as  it  is  delivered  in 
a  tone  which  ranges  from  a  rich  barytone  to  a  rather 
rasping  tenor.  At  this  I  withdraw  and  go  to  the 
other  end  of  the  counter,  where  I  can  begin  life 
over  again  with  a  clean  slate. 

Here,  perhaps,  I  am  suddenly  confronted  by  an 
impatient  clerk  who  is  in  a  perfect  frenzy  to  grab 
my  check  and  tear  it  into  bits  to  drop  in  his  box. 
"  What's  yours?  "  he  flings  at  me.  I  immediately 
lose  my  memory  and  forget  what  it  was  that  I 
wanted.  But  here  is  a  man  who  has  a  lot  of  people 
to  wait  on  and  who  doubtless  gets  paid  according 
to  the  volume  of  business  he  brings  in.  I  have  no 
right  to  interfere  with  his  work.  There  is  a  big 
man  edging  his  way  beside  me  who  is  undoubtedly 
going  to  shout  "  Coca-Cola  "  in  half  a  second.  So 
I  beat  him  to  it  and  say,  "  Coca-Cola,"  which  is 
probably  the  last  drink  in  the  store  that  I  want  to 
buy.  But  it  is  the  only  thing  that  I  can  remember 
at  the  moment,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  I  have  been 
thinking  all  morning  how  good  a  coffee,  egg  and  milk 
would  taste.  I  suppose  that  one  of  the  psychological 
principles  of  advertising  is  to  so  hammer  the  name 
of  your  product  into  the  mind  of  the  timid  buyer 
that  when  he  is  confronted  by  a  brusk  demand  for 
[16] 


"COFFEE,  MEGG  AND  ILK" 

an  order  he  can't  think  of  anything  else  to  say, 
whether  he  wants  it  or  not. 

This  dread  of  offending  the  minor  official  or  ap- 
pearing to  a  disadvantage  before  a  clerk  extends 
even  to  my  taking  nourishment.  I  don't  think  that 
I  have  ever  yet  gone  into  a  restaurant  and  ordered 
exactly  what  I  wanted.  If  only  the  waiter  would 
give  me  the  card  and  let  me  alone  for,  say,  fif- 
teen minutes,  as  he  does  when  I  want  to  get  him 
to  bring  me  my  check,  I  could  work  out  a  meal  along 
the  lines  of  what  I  like.  But  when  he  stands  over 
me,  with  disgust  clearly  registered  on  his  face,  I 
order  the  thing  I  like  least  and  consider  myself 
lucky  to  get  out  of  it  with  so  little  disgrace. 

And  yet  I  have  no  doubt  that  if  one  could  see 
him  in  his  family  life  the  Workingman  is  just  an 
ordinary  person  like  the  rest  of  us.  He  is  probably 
not  at  all  as  we  think  of  him  in  our  dealings  with 
him — a  harsh,  dictatorial,  intolerant  autocrat,  but 
rather  a  kindly  soul  who  likes  nothing  better  than 
to  sit  by  the  fire  with  his  children  and  read. 

And  he  would  probably  be  the  first  person  to 
scoff  at  the  idea  that  he  could  frighten  me. 


[17] 


Ill 

WHEN  GENIUS  REMAINED  YOUR 
HUMBLE  SERVANT 

OF  course,  I  really  know  nothing  about  it,  but 
I  would  be  willing  to  wager  that  the  last  words 
of  Penelope,  as  Odysseus  bounced  down  the  front 
steps,  bag  in  hand,  were:  "Now,  don't  forget  to 
write,  Odie.  You'll  find  some  papyrus  rolled  up 
in  your  clean  peplum,  and  just  drop  me  a  line  on 
it  whenever  you  get  a  chance." 

And  ever  since  that  time  people  have  been  prom- 
ising to  write,  and  then  explaining  why  they  haven't 
written.  Most  personal  correspondence  of  to-day 
consists  of  letters  the  first  half  of  which  are  given 
over  to  an  indexed  statement  of  reasons  why  the 
writer  hasn't  written  before,  followed  by  one  para- 
graph of  small  talk,  with  the  remainder  devoted  to 
reasons  why  it  is  imperative  that  the  letter  be 
brought  to  a  close.  So  many  people  begin  their 
letters  by  saying  that  they  have  been  rushed  to  death 
during  the  last  month,  and  therefore  haven't  found 
time  to  write,  that  one  wonders  where  all  the  grown 
persons  come  from  who  attend  movies  at  eleven  in 
[18] 


WHEN  GENIUS  REMAINED 

the  morning.     There  has  been  a  misunderstanding 
of  the  word  "  busy  "  somewhere. 

So  explanatory  has  the  method  of  letter  writing 
become  that  it  is  probable  that  if  Odysseus  were  a 
modern  traveler  his  letters  home  to  Penelope  would 
average  something  like  this: 

Calypso, 

Friday  afternoon. 

DEAR  PEN: — I  have  been  so  tied  up  with  work 
during  the  last  week  that  I  haven't  had  a  chance 
to  get  near  a  desk  to  write  to  you.  I  have  been 
trying  to  every  day,  but  something  would  come 
up  just  at  the  last  minute  that  would  prevent  me. 
Last  Monday  I  got  the  papyrus  all  unrolled,  and 
then  I  had  to  tend  to  Scylla  and  Charybdis  (I  may 
have  written  you  about  them  before),  and  by  the 
time  I  got  through  with  them  it  was  bedtime,  and, 
believe  me,  I  am  snatching  every  bit  of  sleep  I  can 
get  these  days.  And  so  it  went,  first  the  Lsestry- 
gones,  and  then  something  else,  and  here  it  is  Fri- 
day. Well,  there  isn't  much  news  to  write  about. 
Things  are  going  along  here  about  as  usual.  There 
is  a  young  nymph  here  who  seems  to  own  the  place, 
but  I  haven't  had  any  chance  to  meet  her  socially. 
Well,  there  goes  the  ship's  bell.  I  guess  I  had  bet- 
ter be  bringing  this  to  a  close.  I  have  got  a  lot 
[19] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

of  work  to  do  before  I  get  dressed  to  go  to  a  dinner 
of  that  nymph  I  was  telling  you  about.  I  have  met 
her  brother,  and  he  and  I  are  interested  in  the  same 
line  of  goods.  He  was  at  Troy  with  me.  Well,  I 
guess  I  must  be  closing.  Will  try  to  get  off  a  longer 
letter  in  a  day  or  two. 

Your  loving  husband, 

ODIE. 

P.S. — You  haven't  got  that  bunch  of  sports  hang- 
ing round  the  palace  still,  have  you?  Tell  Telema- 
chus  I'll  take  him  out  of  school  if  I  hear  of  his  play- 
ing around  with  any  of  them. 

But  there  was  a  time  when  letter  writing  was 
such  a  fad,  especially  among  the  young  girls,  that 
if  they  had  had  to  choose  between  eating  three  meals 
a  day  and  writing  a  letter  they  wouldn't  have  given 
the  meals  even  a  consideration.  In  fact,  they 
couldn't  do  both,  for  the  length  of  maidenly  letters 
in  those  days  precluded  any  time  out  for  meals. 
They  may  have  knocked  off  for  a  few  minutes  dur- 
'ing  the  heat  of  the  day  for  a  whiff  at  a  bottle  of 
salts,  but  to  nibble  at  anything  heartier  than  let- 
tuce would  have  cramped  their  style. 

Take  Miss  Clarissa  Harlowe,  for  instance.  In 
Richardson's  book  (which,  in  spite  of  my  personal 
aversion  to  it,  has  been  hailed  by  every  great  writer, 

[20] 


WHEN  GENIUS  REMAINED 

from  Pope  to  Stevenson,  as  being  perfectly  bully) 
she  is  given  the  opportunity  of  telling  2,400  closely 
printed  pages  full  of  story  by  means  of  letters  to 
her  female  friend,  Miss  Howe  (who  plays  a  part 
similar  to  the  orchestra  leader  in  Frank  Tinney's 
act).  And  2,400  pages  is  nothing  to  her.  When 
the  book  closes  she  is  just  beginning  to  get  her 
stride.  As  soon  as  she  got  through  with  that  she 
probably  sat  down  and  wrote  a  series  of  letters 
to  the  London  papers  about  the  need  for  conscrip- 
tion to  fight  the  Indians  in  America. 

To  a  girl  like  Clarissa,  in  the  middle  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  no  day  was  too  full  of  horrors,  no 
hour  was  too  crowded  with  terrific  happenings  to 
prevent  her  from  seating  herself  at  a  desk  (she  must 
have  carried  the  desk  about  with  her,  strapped  over 
her  shoulder)  and  tearing  off  twenty  or  thirty  pages 
'to  Friend  Anna,  telling  her  all  about  it.  The  only 
way  that  I  can  see  in  which  she  could  accomplish 
this  so  efficiently  would  be  to  have  a  copy  boy  stand- 
ing at  her  elbow,  who  took  the  letter,  sheet  by  sheet, 
as  she  wrote  it,  and  dashed  with  it  to  the  printer. 

It  is  hard  to  tell  just  which  a  girl  of  that  period 
considered  more  important,  the  experiences  she  was 
'writing  of  or  the  letter  itself.  She  certainly  never 
slighted  the  letter.  If  the  experience  wanted  to  over- 
take her,  and  jump  up  on  the  desk  beside  her,  all 

[21] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

right,  but,  experience  or  no  experience,  she  was  go- 
ing to  get  that  letter  in  the  next  post  or  die  in  the 
attempt.  Unfortunately,  she  never  died  in  the 
attempt. 

Thus,  an  attack  on  a  young  lady's  house  by  a 
band  of  cutthroats,  resulting  in  the  burning  of  the 
structure  and  her  abduction,  might  have  been  told 
of  in  the  eighteenth  century  letter  system  as  fol- 
lows: 

Monday  night. 

SWEET  ANNA: — At  this  writing  I  find  myself  in 
the  most  horrible  circumstance  imaginable.  Picture 
to  yourself,  if  you  can,  my  dear  Anna,  a  party  of 
villainous  brigands,  veritable  cutthroats,  all  of  them, 
led  by  a  surly  fellow  in  green  alpaca  with  white 
insertion,  breaking  their  way,  by  very  force, 
through  the  side  of  your  domicile,  like  so  many  ugly 
intruders,  and  threatening  you  with  vile  impreca- 
tions to  make  you  disclose  the  hiding  place  of  the 
family  jewels.  If  the  mere  thought  of  such  a  con- 
tingency is  painful  to  you,  my  beloved  Anna,  con- 
sider what  it  means  to  me,  your  delicate  friend,  to 
whom  it  is  actually  happening  at  this  very  minute! 
For  such  is  in  very  truth  the  situation  which  is 
disclosing  itself  in  my  room  as  I  write.  Not  three 
feet  away  from  me  is  the  odious  person  before  de- 

[22] 


WHEN  GENIUS  REMAINED 

scribed.  Now  he  is  threatening  me  with  renewed 
vigor!  Now  he  has  placed  his  coarse  hands  on 
my  throat,  completely  hiding  the  pearl  necklace 
which  papa  brought  me  from  Epsom  last  summer, 
and  which  you,  and  also  young  Pindleson  (whose 
very  name  I  mention  with  a  blush),  have  so  often 
admired.  But  more  of  this  later,  and  until  then, 
believe  nie,  my  dear  Anna,  to  be 

Your  ever  distressed  and  affectionate 

CL.  HARLOWE. 

Monday  night.    Later. 

DEAREST  ANNA: — Now,  indeed,  it  is  evident,  my 
best,  my  only  friend,  that  I  am  face  to  face  with 
the  bitterest  of  fates.  You  will  remember  that  in 
my  last  letter  I  spoke  to  you  of  a  party  of  unprin- 
cipled knaves  who  were  invading  my  apartment. 
And  now  do  I  find  that  they  have,  in  furtherance 
of  their  inexcusable  plans,  set  fire  to  that  portion 
of  the  house  which  lies  directly  behind  this,  so 
that  as  I  put  my  pen  to  paper  the  flames  are  creep- 
ing, like  hungry  creatures  of  some  sort,  through 
the  partitions  and  into  this  very  room,  so  that  did 
I  esteem  my  safety  more  than  my  correspondence 
with  you,  my  precious  companion,  I  should  at  once 
be  making  preparation  for  immediate  departure.  O 
my  dear!  To  be  thus  seized,  as  I  am  at  this  very 
[23] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 


To  be  thus  seized  ...  is  truly,  you  will  agree,  my  sweet  Anna, 
a  pitiable  episode." 


WHEN  GENIUS  REMAINED 

instant,  by  the  unscrupulous  leader  of  the  band  and 
carried,  by  brute  force,  down  the  stairway  through 
the  butler's  pantry  and  into  the  servants'  hall,  writ- 
ing as  I  go,  resting  my  poor  paper  on  the  shoulder 
of  my  detested  abductor,  is  truly,  you  will  agree, 
my  sweet  Anna,  a  pitiable  episode. 
Adieu,  my  intimate  friend. 

Your  obt.  s'v't, 

CL.  HARLOWE. 

One  wonders  (or,  at  least,  7  wonder,  and  that  is 
sufficient  for  the  purposes  of  this  article)  what  the 
letter  writing  young  lady  of  that  period  would  have 
done  had  she  lived  in  this  day  of  postcards  show- 
ing the  rocks  at  Scipawisset  or  the  Free  Public  Li- 
brary in  East  Tarvia.  She  might  have  used  them  for 
some  of  her  shorter  messages,  but  I  rather  doubt  it. 
The  foregoing  scene  could  hardly  have  been  done 
justice  to  on  a  card  bearing  the  picture  of  the 
Main  Street  of  the  town,  looking  north  from  the 
Soldiers'  Monument,  with  the  following  legend: 

"  Our  house  is  the  third  on  the  left  with  the  lilac 
bush.  Cross  marks  window  where  gang  of  rough- 
necks have  just  broken  in  and  are  robbing  and 
burning  the  house.  Looks  like  a  bad  night.  Wish 
you  were  here.  "  C.  H." 

[25] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

No;  that  would  never  have  done,  but  it  would 
have  been  a  big  relief  for  the  postilion,  or  whoever 
it  was  that  had  to  carry  Miss  Clarissa's  effusions  to 
their  destination.  The  mail  on  Monday  morning, 
after  a  springlike  Sunday,  must  have  been  some- 
thing in  the  nature  of  a  wagon  load  of  rolls  of 
news  print  that  used  to  be  seen  standing  in  front 
of  newspaper  offices  in  the  good  old  days  when 
newspapers  were  printed  on  paper  stock.  Of  course, 
the  postilion  had  the  opportunity  of  whiling  away 
the  time  between  stations  by  reading  some  of  the 
spicier  bits  in  the  assortment,  but  even  a  postilion 
must  have  had  his  feelings,  and  a  man  can't  read 
that  kind  of  stuff  all  of  the  time,  and  still  keep  his 
health. 

Of  course,  there  are  a  great  many  people  now 
who  write  letters  because  they  like  to.  Also,  there 
are  some  who  do  it  because  they  feel  that  they 
owe  it  to  posterity  and  to  their  publishers  to  do 
so.  As  soon  as  a  man  begins  to  sniff  a  chance  that 
he  may  become  moderately  famous  he  is  apt  to 
brush  up  on  his  letter  writing  and  never  send  any- 
thing out  that  has  not  been  polished  and  proof- 
read, with  the  idea  in  mind  that  some  day  some 
one  is  going  to  get  all  of  his  letters  together  and 
make  a  book  of  them.  Apparently,  most  great  men 
whose  letters  have  been  published  have  had  premoni- 
[26] 


WHEN  GENIUS  REMAINED 

tion  of  their  greatness  when  quite  young,  as  their 
childish  letters  bear  the  marks  of  careful  and  stud- 
ied attention  to  publicity  values.  One  can  almost 
imagine  the  budding  genius,  aged  eight,  sitting  at 
his  desk  and  saying  to  himself: 


"  I  must  not  forget  that  I  am  now  going 
through  the  '  Sturm  und  Drang '  period." 

"  In  this  spontaneous  letter  to  my  father  I  must 
not  forget  that  I  am  now  going  through  the  Sturm 
und  Drang  (storm  and  stress)  period  of  my  youth 
and  that  this  letter  will  have  to  be  grouped  by  the 
compiler  under  the  Sturm  und  Drang  (storm  and 
stress)  section  in  my  collected  letters.  I  must  there- 
fore keep  in  the  key  and  quote  only  such  of  my  fa- 
[27] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

vorite  authors  as  will  contribute  to  the  effect.  I 
think  I  will  use  Werther  to-day.  .  .  .  My  dear  Fa- 
ther "—etc. 

I  have  not  known  many  geniuses  in  their  youth, 
but  I  have  had  several  youths  pointed  out  to  me 
by  their  parents  as  geniuses,  and  I  must  confess 
that  I  have  never  seen  a  letter  from  any  one  of  them 
that  differed  greatly  from  the  letters  of  a  normal 
boy,  unless  perhaps  they  were  spelled  less  accurately. 
Given  certain  uninteresting  conditions,  let  us  say, 
at  boarding  school,  and  I  believe  that  the  average 
bright  boy's  letter  home  would  read  something  in 
this  fashion: 

Exeter,  N.  H., 
Wed.,  April  25. 
MY  DEAR  FATHER  AND  MOTHER: 

I  have  been  working  pretty  hard  this  week,  study- 
ing for  a  history  examination,  and  so  haven't  had 
much  of  a  chance  to  write  to  you.  Everything  is 
about  the  same  as  usual  here,  and  there  doesn't 
seem  to  be  much  news  to  write  to  you  about.  The 
box  came  all  right,  and  thank  you  very  much.  All 
the  fellows  liked  it,  especially  the  little  apple  pies. 
Thank  you  very  much  for  sending  it.  There  hasn't 
much  been  happening  here  since  I  wrote  you  last 
week.  I  had  to  buy  a  new  pair  of  running  drawers, 
[28] 


WHEN  GENIUS  REMAINED 

which  cost  me  fifty  cents.  Does  that  come  out  of 
my  allowance?  Or  will  you  pay  for  it?  There 
doesn't  seem  to  be  any  other  news.  Well,  there 
goes  the  bell,  so  I  guess  I  will  be  closing. 

Your  loving  son, 

BUXTON. 

Given  the  same,  even  less  interesting  conditions, 
and  a  boy  such  as  Stevenson  must  have  been  (judg- 
ing from  his  letters)  could  probably  have  delivered 
himself  of  this,  and  more,  too: 

Wyckham-Wyckham, 

The  Tenth. 

DEAR  PATER: — To-day  has  been  unbelievably  ex- 
quisite !  Great,  undulating  clouds,  rolling  in  serried 
formation  across  a  sky  of  pure  lapis  lazuli.  I  feel 
like  what  Updike  calls  a  "  myrmidon  of  unhesitat- 
ing amplitude."  And  a  perfect  gem  of  a  letter  from 
Toto  completed  the  felicitous  experience.  You 
would  hardly  believe,  and  yet  you  must,  in  your 
co&ur  des  occurs,  know,  that  the  brown,  esoteric  hills 
of  this  Oriental  retreat  affect  me  like  the  red  wine 
of  Russilon,  and,  indigent  as  I  am  in  these  matters, 
I  cannot  but  feel  that  you  have,  as  Herbert  says: 

"  Carve  or  discourse;  do  not  a  famine  fear. 
Who  carves  is  kind  to  two,  who  talks  to  all." 
[29] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

Yesterday  I  saw  a  little  native  boy,  a  veritable 
boy  of  the  streets,  playing  at  a  game  at  once  so 
naive  and  so  resplendent  that  I  was  irresistibly 
drawn  to  its  contemplation.  You  will  doubtless  jeer 
when  I  tell  you.  He  was  tossing  a  small  blatch, 
such  as  grow  in  great  profusion  here,  to  and  fro 
between  himself  and  the  wall  of  the  limple.  I  was 
stunned  for  the  moment,  and  then  I  realized  that 
I  was  looking  into  the  very  soul  of  the  peasantry, 
the  open  stigma  of  the  nation.  How  queer  it  all 
seemed!  Did  it  not? 

You  doubtless  think  me  an  ungrateful  fellow  for 
not  mentioning  the  delicious  assortment  of  goodies 
which  came,  like  melons  to  Artemis,  to  this  be- 
nighted gesellschajt  on  Thursday  last.  They  were 
devoured  to  the  last  crumb,  and  I  was  reminded  as 
we  ate,  like  so  many  wurras,  of  those  lines  of  that 
gorgeous  Herbert,  of  whom  I  am  so  fond: 

"  Must  all  be  veiled,  while  he  that  reads  divines, 
Catching  the  sense  at  two  removes?  " 

The  breeze  is  springing  up,  and  it  brings  to  me 
messages  of  the  open  meadows  of  Litzel,  deep  fes- 
tooned with  the  riot  of  gloriannas.  How  quiet  they 
seem  to  me  as  I  think  of  them  now!  How  emble- 
matic! Do  you  know,  my  dear  Parent,  that  I  some- 
[30] 


WHEN  GENIUS  REMAINED 

times  wonder  if,  after  all,  it  were  not  better  to 
dream,  and  dream  .  .  .  and  dream. 

Your  affectionate  son, 

BERGQUIST. 

So  don't  worry  about  your  boy  if  he  writes  home 
like  that.  He  may  simply  have  an  eye  for  fame  and 
future  compilation. 


IV 

THE  TORTURES  OF  WEEK-END 
VISITING 

fTMrlE  present  labor  situation  shows  to  what  a 
A  pretty  pass  things  may  come  because  of  a 
lack  of  understanding  between  the  parties  involved. 
I  bring  in  the  present  labor  situation  just  to  give 
a  touch  of  timeliness  to  this  thing.  Had  I  been 
writing  for  the  Christmas  number,  I  should  have 
begun  as  follows:  "The  indiscriminate  giving  of 
Christmas  presents  shows  to  what  a  pretty  pass 
things  may  come  because  of  a  lack  of  understand- 
ing between  the  parties  involved." 

The  idea  to  be  driven  home  is  that  things  may 
come  to  a  pretty  pass  by  the  parties  involved  in 
an  affair  of  any  kind  if  they  do  not  come  to  an 
understanding  before  commencing  operations. 

I  hope  I  have  made  my  point  clear.  Especially 
is  this  true,  (watch  out  carefully  now,  as  the  whole 
nub  of  the  article  will  be  coming  along  in  just  a  min- 
ute), especially  is  this  true  in  the  relations  between 
host  and  guest  on  week-end  visits.  (There,  you  have 
it!  In  fact,  the  title  to  this  whole  thing  might  very 
[32] 


THE  TORTURES  OF  VISITING 

well  be,  "  The  Need  for  a  Clearer  Definition  of  Re- 
lations between  Host  and  Guest  on  Week-end  Vis- 
its," and  not  be  at  all  overstating  it,  at  that.) 

The  logic  of  this  will  be  apparent  to  any  one  who 
has  ever  been  a  host  or  a  guest  at  a  week-end  party, 
a  classification  embracing  practically  all  Caucasians 
over  eleven  years  of  age  who  can  put  powder  on 
the  nose  or  tie  a  bow-tie.  Who  has  not  wished  that 
his  host  would  come  out  frankly  at  the  beginning  of 
the  visit  and  state,  in  no  uncertain  terms,  the  rules 
and  preferences  of  the  household  in  such  matters  as 
the  breakfast  hour?  And  who  has  not  sounded  his 
guest  to  find  out  what  he  likes  in  the  regulation  of 
his  diet  and  modus  vivendi  (mode  of  living)  ?  Col- 
lective bargaining  on  the  part  of  labor  unions  and 
capital  makes  it  possible  for  employers  to  know  just 
what  the  workers  think  on  matters  of  common  in- 
terest. Is  collective  bargaining  between  host  and 
guest  so  impossible,  then? 

Take,  for  example,  the  matter  of  arising  in  the 
morning.  Of  course,  where  there  is  a  large  house- 
party  the  problem  is  a  simple  one,  for  you  can  al- 
ways hear  the  others  pattering  about  and  brushing 
their  teeth.  You  can  regulate  your  own  arising  by 
the  number  of  people  who  seem  to  be  astir.  But 
if  you  are  the  only  guest  there  is  apt  to  be  a  fright- 
ful misunderstanding. 

[33] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

"  At  what  time  is  breakfast?  "  you  ask. 

"  Oh,  any  old  time  on  Sundays/'  replies  the  host- 
ess with  a  generous  gesture.  "  Sleep  as  late  as  you 
like.  This  is  « Liberty  Hall.'  " 

The  sentiment  in  this  attitude  is  perfectly  bully, 
but  there  is  nothing  that  you  can  really  take  hold 
of  in  it.  It  satisfies  at  the  time,  but  in  the  morning 
there  is  a  vagueness  about  it  that  is  simply  terrify- 
ing. 

Let  us  say  that  you  awake  at  eight.  You  listen 
and  hear  no  one  stirring.  Then,  over  on  the  cool 
pillow  again  until  eight-twenty.  Again  up  on  the 
elbow,  with  head  cocked  on  one  side.  There  is  a 
creak  in  the  direction  of  the  stairs.  They  may  all 
be  up  and  going  down  to  breakfast!  It  is  but  the 
work  of  a  moment,  to  bound  out  of  bed  and  listen 
at  the  door.  Perhaps  open  it  modestly  and  peer  out. 
Deathlike  silence,  broken  only,  as  the  phrase  goes, 
by  the  ticking  of  the  hall  clock,  and  not  a  soul 
in  sight.  Probably  they  are  late  sleepers.  Maybe 
eleven  o'clock  is  their  Sunday  rising  hour.  Some 
people  are  like  that. 

Shut  the  door  and  sit  on  the  edge  of  the  bed. 
More  sleep  is  out  of  the  question.  Let's  take  a  look 
at  the  pictures  in  the  guest-room,  just  to  pass  the 
time.  Here's  one  of  Lorna  Doone.  How  d'e  do, 
Lorna?  Here's  a  group — taken  in  1902 — showing 
[34] 


THE  TORTURES  OF  VISITING 

your  host  in  evening  clothes,  holding  a  mandolin. 
Probably  a  member  of  his  college  musical-club. 
Rather  unkempt  looking  bunch,  you  must  say.  Well, 
how  about  this  one?  An  etching,  showing  suspi- 
cious-looking barges  on  what  is  probably  the 
Thames.  Fair  enough,  at  that. 

Back  to  the  door  and  listen  again.  Tick-tock-tick- 
tock.  Probably,  if  you  started  your  tub,  you'd  wake 
the  whole  house.  Let's  sit  down  on  the  edge  of  the 
bed  again. 

Hello,  here  are  some  books  on  the  table.  "  Fifty 
Famous  Sonnets,"  illustrated  by  Maxfield  Parrish. 
Never  touch  a  sonnet  before  breakfast.  "  My  ex- 
periences in  the  Alps,"  by  a  woman  mountain-climber 
who  has  written  on  the  fly-leaf,  "  To  my  good  friends 
the  Elbridges,  in  memory  of  many  happy  days  to- 
gether at  Chamounix.  October,  1907."  That  set- 
tles that.  "  Essay  on  Compensation  "  in  limp  leather, 
by  R.  W.  Emerson,  published  by  Houghton,  Mifflin 
&  Co.  Oh,  very  well!  You  suppose  they  thought 
that  would  be  over  your  head,  did  they?  Well,  we'll 
just  show  them !  We'll  read  it  just  for  spite.  Open- 
ing, to  the  red  ribbon: 

"  Of  the  like  nature  is  that  expectation  of  change 
which  instantly  follows  the  suspension  of  our  vol- 
untary activity.  The  terror  of  cloudless  noon — " 

By  the  way,  it  must  be  nearly  noon  now!  Ten 
[35] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

minutes  past  nine,  only!  Well,  the  only  thing  to 
do  is  get  dressed  and  go  out  and  walk  about  the 
grounds.  Eliminate  the  tub  as  too  noisy.  And  so, 
very  cautiously,  almost  clandestinely,  you  proceed 
to  dress. 

And  now,  just  to  reverse  the  process.  Suppose 
you  are  the  host.  You  have  arisen  at  eight  and  lis- 
tened at  the  guest's  door.  No  sound.  Tip-toe  back 
and  get  dressed,  talking  in  whispers  to  your  wife 
(the  hostess)  and  cramming  flannel  bears  into  the 
infant's  mouth  to  keep  him  from  disturbing  the 
sleeper. 

"  Bill  looked  tired  last  night.  Better  let  him  sleep 
a  little  longer,"  you  suggest.  And  so,  downstairs  on 
your  hands  and  knees,  and  look  over  the  Sunday 
papers.  Then  a  bracing  walk  on  the  porch,  re- 
sulting in  a  terrific  appetite. 

A  glance  at  the  watch  shows  nine  o'clock.  Sun- 
day breakfast  is  usually  at  eight-thirty.  The  warm 
aroma  of  coffee  creeps  in  from  the  kitchen  and, 
somewhere,  some  one  is  baking  muffins.  This  is 
awful!  You  suppose  it  feels  something  like  this  to 
be  caught  on  an  ice-floe  without  any  food  and  so 
starve  to  death.  Only  there  you  can't  smell  coffee 
and  muffins.  You  sneak  into  the  dining-room  and 
steal  one  of  the  property  oranges  from  the  side- 
board, but  little  Edgar  sees  you  and  sets  up  such 
[36] 


THE  TORTURES  OF  VISITING 

a  howl  that  you  have  to  give  it  to  him.  The  hostess 
suggests  that  your  friend  may  have  the  sleeping- 
sickness.  Weakened  by  hunger,  you  hotly  resent 
this,  and  one  word  leads  to  another. 

"Oh,  very  well,  I'll  go  up  and  rout  him  out," 
you  snarl. 

Upstairs  again,  and  poise,  in  listening  attitude, 


'  Hello,  Bill,'  you  say  flatly. 


just  in  front  of  the  guest's  door.  Slowly  the  door 
opens,  inch  by  inch,  and,  finally  his  head  is  edged 
cautiously  out  toward  yours. 

"  Hello,  Bill,"  you  say  flatly,  "  what  are  you  get- 
ting up  this  time  of  the  morning  for?  Thought 
I  told  you  to  sleep  late." 

"Morning,  Ed,"  he  says,  equally  flatly,  "hope 
[37] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

I  haven't  kept  you  all  waiting."  Then  you  both  lie 
and  eat  breakfast. 

Such  a  misunderstanding  is  apt  to  go  to  almost 
any  length.  I  once  knew  of  a  man  on  a  week-end 
visit  who  spent  an  entire  Sunday  in  his  room,  listen- 
ing at  his  door  to  see  if  the  family  were  astir,  while, 
in  the  meantime,  the  family  were,  one  by  one,  tip- 
toeing to  his  door  to  see  if  they  could  detect  any 
signs  of  life  from  him. 

Each  thought  the  other  needed  rest. 

Along  about  three  in  the  afternoon  the  family 
threw  all  hospitality  aside  and  ate  breakfast,  dead- 
ening the  sound  of  the  cutlery  as  much  as  possible, 
little  dreaming  that  their  guest  was  looking  through 
the  "A  Prayer  for  Each  Day"  calendar  for  the 
ninth  time  and  seriously  considering  letting  himself 
down  from  the  window  on  a  sheet  and  making  for 
the  next  train.  Shortly  after  dark  persistent  rumors 
got  abroad  that  he  had  done  away  with  himself, 
and  every  one  went  up  and  sniffed  for  gas.  It  was 
only  when  the  maid,  who  was  not  in  on  the  secret, 
bolted  into  the  room  to  turn  down  his  bed  for  the 
night,  that  she  found  him  tip-toeing  about,  packing 
and  unpacking  his  bag  and  listening  eagerly  at  the 
wall.  (Now  don't  ask  how  it  happened  that  the 
maid  didn't  know  that  his  bed  hadn't  been  made 
that  morning.  What  difference  does  it  make,  any- 
[38] 


THE  TORTURES  OF  VISITING 

way?  It  is  such  questions  as  that,  that  blight  any 
attempt  at  individual  writing  in  this  country.) 

Don't  think,  just  because  I  have  taken  all  this 
space  to  deal  with  the  rising-hour  problem  that  there 
are  no  other  points  to  be  made.  Oh,  not  at  all. 
There  is,  for  instance,  the  question  of  exercise. 
After  dinner  the  host  says  to  himself:  "  Something 
must  be  done.  I  wonder  if  he  likes  to  walk."  Aloud, 
he  says:  "  Well,  Bill,  how  about  a  little  hike  in  the 
country?  " 

A  hike  in  the  country  being  the  last  thing  in  the 
world  that  Bill  wants,  he  says,  "  Right-o!  Anything 
you  say."  And  so,  although  walking  is  a  tremen- 
dous trial  to  the  host,  who  has  weak  ankles,  he 
bundles  up  with  a  great  show  of  heartiness  and  grabs 
his  stick  as  if  this  were  the  one  thing  he  lived  for. 

After  about  a  mile  of  hobbling  along  the  coun- 
try-road the  host  says,  hopefully:  "  Don't  let  me 
tire  you  out,  old  man.  Any  time  you  want  to  turn 
back,  just  say  the  word." 

The  guest,  thinking  longingly  of  the  fireside,  scoffs 
at  the  idea  of  turning  back,  insisting  that  if  there  is 
one  thing  in  all  the  world  that  he  likes  better  than 
walking  it  is  running.  So  on  they  jog,  hippity-hop, 
hippity-hop,  each  wishing  that  it  would  rain  so  that 
they  could  turn  about  and  go  home. 

Here  again  the  thing  may  go  to  almost  tragic 
F39l 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

lengths.  Suppose  neither  has  the  courage  to  sug- 
gest the  return  move.  They  might  walk  on  into 
Canada,  or  they  might  become  exhausted  and  have 
to  be  taken  into  a  roadhouse  and  eat  a  "  $2  old- 
fashioned  Southern  dinner  of  fried  chicken  and  waf- 
fles." The  imagination  revolts  at  a  further  contem- 


So  on  they  jog. 


Each  wishing  that  it  would  rain." 


plation  of  the  possibilities  of  this  lack  of  cooperation 
between  guest  and  host. 

I  once  visited  a  man  who  had  an  outdoor  swim- 
ming-pool on  his  estate.  (Consider  that  as  very 
casually  said.)  It  was  in  April,  long  before  Spring 
had  really  understood  what  was  expected  of  her. 
My  first  night  there  my  host  said: 

"  Are  you  a  morning  plunger?  " 
[40] 


THE  TORTURES  OF  VISITING 

Thinking  that  he  referred  to  a  tub  plunge  in  a 
warm  bathroom,  I  glowed  and  said:  "  You  bet." 

"  I'll  call  for  you  at  seven  in  the  morning,  then," 
he  said,  "  and  we'll  go  out  to  the  pool." 

It  was  evidently  his  morning  custom  and  I  wasn't 
going  to  have  it  said  of  me  that  a  middle-aged  man 
could  outdo  me  in  virility.  So,  at  seven  in  the  morn- 
ing, in  a  dense  fog  (with  now  and  then  a  slash  of 
cold  rain),  we  picked  our  way  out  to  the  pool  and 
staged  a  vivid  Siberian  moving  picture  scene,  show- 
ing naked  peasants  bathing  in  the  Nevsky.  My  visit 
lasted  five  days,  and  I  afterward  learned,  from  one 
to  whom  my  host  had  confided,  that  it  was  the 
worst  five  days  he  had  ever  gone  through,  and  that 
he  has  chronic  joint-trouble  as  a  result  of  those 
plunges.  "  But  I  couldn't  be  outdone  by  a  mere 
stripling,"  he  said,  "  and  the  boy  certainly  enjoyed 
it." 

All  of  this  might  have  been  avoided  by  the  post- 
ing of  a  sign  in  a  conspicuous  place  in  my  bedroom, 
reading  as  follows:  "Personally,  I  dislike  swim- 
ming in  the  pool  at  this  time  of  the  year.  Guests 
wishing  to  do  so  may  obtain  towels  at  the  desk." 
How  very  simple  and  practical! 

The  sign  system  is  the  only  solution  I  can  offer. 
It  is  crude  and  brutal,  but  it  admits  of  no  mis- 
understanding. A  sign  in  each  guest-room,  giving 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

the  hours  of  meals,  political  and  religious  preferences 
of  the  family,  general  views  on  exercise,  etc.,  etc., 
with  a  blank  for  the  guest  to  fill  out,  stating  his  own 
views  on  these  subjects,  would  make  it  possible  to 
visit  (or  entertain)  with  a  sense  of  security  thus 
far  unknown  upon  our  planet. 


[42] 


GARDENING  NOTES 

DURING  the  past  month  almost  every  paper, 
with  the  exception  of  the  agricultural  jour- 
nals, has  installed  an  agricultural  department,  con- 
taining short  articles  by  Lord  Northcliffe,  or  some 
one  else  in  the  office  who  had  an  unoccupied  type- 
writer, telling  the  American  citizen  how  to  start 
and  hold  the  interest  of  a  small  garden.  The  seed 
catalogue  has  become  the  catechism  of  the  patriot, 
and,  if  you  don't  like  to  read  the  brusk,  prosy  di- 
rections on  planting  as  given  there,  you  may  find  the 
same  thing  done  in  verse  in  your  favorite  poetry 
magazine,  or  a  special  department  in  The  Plumbing 
Age  under  the  heading  "The  Plumber's  Garden: 
How  and  When  to  Plant." 

But  all  of  these  editorial  suggestions  appear  to  be 
conducted  by  professionals  for  the  benefit  of  the 
layman,  which  seems  to  me  to  be  a  rather  one-sided 
way  of  going  about  the  thing.  Obviously  the  sug- 
gestions should  come  from  a  layman  himself,  in  the 
nature  of  warnings  to  others. 

I  am  qualified  to  put  forth  such  an  article  be- 
[43] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

cause  of  two  weeks'  service  in  my  own  back  yard, 
doing  my  bit  for  Peter  Henderson  and  planting 
all  sorts  of  things  in  the  ground  without  the  slight- 
est expectation  of  ever  seeing  anything  of  any  of 
them  again.  If,  by  any  chance,  a  sprout  should 
show  itself,  unmistakably  the  result  of  one  of  my 
plantings,  I  would  be  willing  to  be  quoted  as  saying 
that  Nature  is  wonderful.  In  fact,  I  would  take  it 
as  a  personal  favor,  and  would  feel  that  anything 
that  I  might  do  in  the  future  for  Nature  would  be 
little  enough  in  return  for  the  special  work  she  went 
to  all  the  trouble  of  doing  for  me.  But  all  of  this 
is  on  condition  that  something  of  mine  grows  into 
manhood.  Otherwise,  Nature  can  go  her  way  and 
I'll  go  mine,  just  as  we  have  gone  up  till  now. 

However,  although  I  am  an  amateur,  I  shall  have 
to  adopt,  in  my  writing,  the  tone  of  a  professional, 
or  I  shall  never  get  any  one  to  believe  what  I  say. 
If,  therefore,  from  now  on  I  sound  a  bit  cold  and 
unfriendly,  you  will  realize  that  a  professional  agri- 
cultural writer  has  to  have  some  dignity  about  his 
stuff,  and  that  beneath  my  rough  exterior  I  am  a 
pleasant  enough  sort  of  person  to  meet  socially. 

Preparing  the  Ground  for  the  Garden 

This  is  one  of  the  most  important  things  that 
the  young  gardener  is  called  upon  to  do.    In  fact, 
[44] 


GARDENING  NOTES 

a  great  many  young  gardeners  never  do  anything 
further.  Some  inherited  weakness,  something  they 
never  realized  they  had  before,  may  crop  out  dur- 
ing this  process:  weak  back,  tendency  of  shoulder- 


"If  you  are  able  to  walk  as  far  as  the  bathtub  .   .   ." 

blades  to  ossification,  misplacement  of  several  im- 
portant vertebrae,  all  are  apt  to  be  discovered  for 
the  first  time  during  the  course  of  one  day's  dig- 
ging. If,  on  the  morning  following  the  first  attempt 
to  prepare  the  ground  for  planting,  you  are  able  to 
walk  in  a  semi-erect  position  as  far  as  the  bath-tub 
(and,  without  outside  assistance,  lift  one  foot  into 
the  water),  you  may  flatter  yourself  that  you  are, 
[45] 


OF  ALL  THINGS ! 

joint  for  joint,  in  as  perfect  condition  as  the  man 
in  the  rubber-heels  advertisements. 

Authorities  differ  as  to  the  best  way  of  digging. 
All  agree  that  it  is  impossible  to  avoid  walking 
about  during  the  following  week  as  if  you  were 
impersonating  an  old  colored  waiter  with  the  lum- 
bago; but  there  are  two  schools,  each  with  its  own 
theory,  as  to  the  less  painful  method.  One  advocates 
bending  over,  without  once  raising  up,  until  the 
whole  row  is  dug.  The  others,  of  whom  I  must  con- 
fess that  I  am  one,  feel  that  it  is  better  to  draw 
the  body  to  a  more  or  less  erect  position  after  each 
shovelful.  In  support  of  this  contention,  Greitz, 
the  well-known  authority  on  the  muscles  of  the  back, 
says  on  page  233  of  his  "  Untersuchungen  iiber  Sitt- 
lichkeitsdelikte  und  Gesellschaftsbiologie  ": 

"The  constant  tightening  and  relaxing  of  the 
latlssimus  dorsi  effected  in  raising  the  body  as  the 
earth  is  tossed  aside,  has  a  tendency  to  relieve  the 
strain  by  distributing  it  equally  among  the  serratus 
posticus  inferior  and  the  corner  of  Thirty-fourth 
Street."  He  then  goes  on  to  say  practically  what 
I  have  said  above. 

The  necessity  for  work  of  such  a  strenuous 
nature  in  the  mere  preliminaries  of  the  process  of 
planting  a  garden  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  aver- 
age back-yard  has,  up  till  the  present  time,  been 
[46] 


GARDENING  NOTES 

behaving  less  like  a  garden  than  anything  else  in 
the  world.  You  might  think  that  a  back-yard,  pos- 
sessed of  an  ordinary  amount  of  decency  and  civic- 
pride  would,  at  some  time  during  its  career,  have 
said  to  itself: 

"Now  look  here!  I  may  some  day  be  called 
upon  to  be  a  garden,  and  the  least  I  can  do  is  to 
get  myself  into  some  sort  of  shape,  so  that,  when 
the  time  comes,  I  will  be  fairly  ready  to  receive  a 
seed  or  two." 

But  no!  Year  in  and  year  out  they  have  been 
drifting  along  in  a  fools'  paradise,  accumulating 
stones  and  queer,  indistinguishable  cans  and  things, 
until  they  were  prepared  to  become  anything,  quar- 
ries, iron-mines,  notion-counters, — anything  but  gar- 
dens. 

I  have  saved  in  a  box  all  the  things  that  I  have 
dug  from  my  back-yard,  and,  when  I  have  them 
assembled,  all  I  will  need  will  be  a  good  engine  to 
make  them  into  a  pretty  fairly  decent  runabout, — 
nothing  elaborate,  mind  you,  but  good  enough  to  run 
the  family  out  in  on  Sunday  afternoons. 

And  then  there  are  lots  of  other  things  that 
wouldn't  even  fit  into  the  runabout.  Queer-looking 
objects,  they  are;  things  that  perhaps  in  their  hey- 
dey  were  rather  stunning,  but  which  have  now  as- 
sumed an  air  of  indifference,  as  if  to  say,  "  Oh,  call 
[471 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

me  anything,  old  fellow,  Ice-pick,  Mainspring, 
Cigar-lighter,  anything,  I  don't  care."  I  tell  you, 
it's  enough  to  make  a  man  stop  and  think.  But 
there,  I  mustn't  get  sentimental. 

In  preparing  the  soil  for  planting,  you  will  need 
several  tools.  Dynamite  would  be  a  beautiful  thing 
to  use,  but  it  would  have  a  tendency  to  get  the 
dirt  into  the  front-hall  and  track  up  the  stairs.  This 
not  being  practicable,  there  is  no  other  way  but 
for  you  to  get  at  it  with  a  fork  (oh,  don'  be  silly), 
a  spade,  and  a  rake.  If  you  have  an  empty  and 
detached  furnace  boiler,  you  might  bring  that  along 
to  fill  with  the  stones  you  will  dig  up.  If  it  is  a 
small  garden,  you  ought  not  to  have  to  empty  the 
boiler  more  than  three  or  four  times.  Any  neigh- 
bor who  is  building  a  stone  house  will  be  glad  to 
contract  with  you  for  the  stones,  and  those  that 
are  left  over  after  he  has  got  his  house  built  can 
be  sold  to  another  neighbor  who  is  building  an- 
other stone  house.  Your  market  is  limited  only 
by  the  number  of  neighbors  who  are  building  stone 
houses. 

On  the  first  day,  when  you  find  yourself  con- 
fronted by  a  stretch  of  untouched  ground  which  is 
to  be  turned  over  (technical  phrase,  meaning  to 
"turn  over"),  you  may  be  somewhat  at  a  loss  to 
know  where  to  begin.  Such  indecision  is  only  natu- 
[48] 


GARDENING  NOTES 

ral,  and  should  cause  no  worry  on  the  part  of  the 
young  gardener.  It  is  something  we  all  have  to  go 
through  with.  You  may  feel  that  it  would  be  futile 
and  unsystematic  to  go  about  digging  up  a  forkful 
here  and  a  shovelful  there,  tossing  the  earth  at 
random,  hi  the  hope  that  in  due  time  you  will  get 
the  place  dug  up.  And  so  it  would. 

The  thing  to  do  is  to  decide  just  where  you  want 
your  garden,  and  what  its  dimensions  are  to  be. 
This  will  have  necessitated  a  previous  drawing  up 
of  a  chart,  showing  just  what  is  to  be  planted  and 
where.  As  this  chart  will  be  the  cause  of  con- 
siderable hard  feeling  in  the  family  circle,  usually 
precipitating  a  fist-fight  over  the  number  of  rows 
of  onions  to  be  set  out,  I  will  not  touch  on  that 
in  this  article.  There  are  some  things  too  intimate 
for  even  a  professional  agriculturist  to  write  of.  I 
will  say,  however,  that  those  in  the  family  who  are 
standing  out  for  onions  might  much  better  save 
their  time  and  feelings  by  pretending  to  give  in, 
and  then,  later  in  the  day,  sneaking  out  and  slip- 
ping the  sprouts  in  by  themselves  in  some  spot 
where  they  will  know  where  to  find  them  again. 

Having  decided  on  the  general  plan  and  dimen- 
sions of  the  plot,  gather  the  family  about  as  if  for 
a  corner-stone  dedication,  and  then  make  a  rather 
impressive  ceremony  of  driving  in  the  first  stake  by 
[49] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

getting  your  little  boy  to  sing  the  first  twelve  words 
of  some  patriotic  air.  (If  he  doesn't  know  the  first 
twelve,  any  twelve  will  do.  The  idea  is  to  keep  the 
music  going  during  the  driving  of  the  stake.) 


"  Make  a  rather  impressive  ceremony  of  driving  the  first  stake.' 


The  stake  is  to  be  driven  at  an  imaginary  corner 
of  what  is  to  be  your  garden,  and  a  string  stretched 
to  another  stake  at  another  imaginary  corner,  and 
there  you  have  a  line  along  which  to  dig.  This 
will  be  a  big  comfort.  You  will  feel  that  at  last 
you  have  something  tangible.  Now  all  that  remains 
is  to  turn  the  ground  over,  harrow  it,  smooth  it  up 
[50] 


GARDENING  NOTES 

nice  and  neat,  plant  your  seeds,  cultivate  them,  thin 
out  your  plants  and  pick  the  crops. 

It  may  seem  that  I  have  spent  most  of  my  time 
in  advice  on  preparing  the  ground  for  planting. 
Such  may  well  be  the  case,  as  that  was  as  far 
as  I  got.  I  then  found  a  man  who  likes  to  do 
those  things  and  whose  doctor  has  told  him  that 
he  ought  to  be  out  of  doors  all  the  time.  He  is  an 
Italian,  and  charges  really  very  little  when  you 
consider  what  he  accomplishes.  Any  further  advice 
on  starting  and  keeping  up  a  garden,  I  shall  have 
to  get  him  to  write  for  you. 


[5'T 


VI 
LESSON  NUMBER  ONE 

FRANKLY,  I  am  not  much  of  a  hand  at  ma- 
chinery of  any  sort.  I  have  no  prejudice 
against  it  as  such,  for  some  of  my  best  friends  are 
of  a  mechanical  turn  of  mind,  and  very  nice  fel- 
lows they  are  too.  But  the  pencil  sharpener  in  our 
office  is  about  as  far  as  I,  personally,  have  ever  got 
in  the  line  of  operating  a  complicated  piece  of  mech- 
anism with  any  degree  of  success. 

So,  when  George  suggested  that  he  teach  me  to 
run  his  car,  it  seemed  a  reasonable  proposition.  Ob- 
viously, some  one  had  to  teach  me.  I  couldn't  be 
expected  to  go  out  and  pick  the  thing  up  by  myself, 
like  learning  to  eat  olives.  No  matter  how  well- 
intentioned  I  might  be,  or  how  long  I  stuck  at  it, 
the  chances  are  that  I  never  could  learn  to  drive 
a  car  simply  by  sitting  in  the  seat  alone  and  fool- 
ing around  among  the  gadgets  until  I  found  the 
right  ones.  Something  would  be  sure  to  happen 
to  spoil  the  whole  thing  long  before  I  got  the  hang 
of  it. 

[52] 


LESSON  NUMBER  ONE 

The  car  was,  therefore,  brought  out  into  the 
driveway  at  the  side  of  the  house,  like  a  bull  be- 
ing led  into  the  ring  for  a  humid  afternoon  with  the 
matador.  It  was  right  here  that  George  began  to 
show  his  true  colors,  for  he  stopped  the  engine, 
which  was  running  very  nicely  as  it  was,  and  said 
that  I  might  as  well  begin  by  learning  to  crank 
it,  as  I  probably  would  spend  seven-eighths  of  my 
driving  time  cranking  in  the  future. 

I  didn't  like  this  in  George.  It  showed  that  he 
wasn't  going  about  it  in  the  right  spirit.  He  was 
beginning  with  the  assumption  that  I  would  make 
a  dub  of  myself,  and,  as  I  was  already  beginning 
to  assume  the  same  thing,  it  looked  rather  black 
for  the  lesson,  with  both  parties  to  it  holding  the 
same  pessimistic  thought. 

So,  right  off  the  bat,  I  said: 

"  No,  George.  It  seems  to  me  that  you  ought  to 
crank  it  yourself.  To-day  I  am  learning  to  drive 
the  car.  '  One  thing  at  a  time '  is  my  motto.  That 
is  what  has  brought  our  modern  industrial  system 
to  its  present  state  of  efficiency:  the  Division  of 
Labor — one  man  who  does  nothing  but  make  holes 
in  washers,  another  who  does  nothing  but  slip  the 
washers  over  the  dinguses  over  which  they  belong; 
one  man  who  devotes  his  whole  time  to  running 
a  car,  another  who  specializes  in  cranking  it.  Now, 
[53] 


OF  ALL  THINGS'. 

in  the  early  days  of  industry,  when  the  guild  was 
the  unit  of  organization  among  the  workers — " 

George,  having  cranked  the  engine,  motioned  me 
into  the  driver's  seat,  and  took  his  position  beside 
me.  It  struck  me  that  the  thing  was  very  poorly 
arranged,  in  that  the  place  which  was  to  be  occu- 
pied by  the  driver,  obviously  the  most  important 
person  in  the  car  (except,  of  course,  the  lady  member 
of  the  party  in  the  tonneau,  who  holds  the  bluebook 
and  gives  wrong  directions  as  to  turnings),  was  all 
cluttered  up  with  a  lot  of  apparatus  and  pedals  and 
things,  so  much  so  that  I  had  to  inhale  and  contract 
in  order  to  squeeze  past  the  wheel  into  my  seat. 
And  even  then  I  was  forced  to  stretch  one  leg  out 
so  far  that  I  kicked  a  little  gadget  on  a  box  ar- 
rangement on  the  dashboard,  which  apparently 
stopped  the  engine.  As  he  cranked  it  again,  George 
said,  among  other  things,  that  it  couldn't  possibly 
have  been  done  except  on  purpose,  and  that  he 
could  take  a  joke  as  well  as  the  next  man,  but 
that,  good  night,  what  was  the  use  of  being  an 
ass? 

As  if  I,  with  no  mechanical  instinct  whatever, 
knew  what  was  in  that  box!  I  don't  know  even  now, 
and  I  have  got  my  driver's  license. 

George  finally  got  things  stirring  again  and 
climbed  in,  leaving  the  door  partly  open — no  doubt 
[54] 


LESSON  NUMBER  ONE 

in  order  that,  in  case  of  emergency,  he  could  walk, 
not  run,  to  the  street  via  the  nearest  exit. 

"The  gear  set  of  this  car  is  of  the  planetary 
type,"  he  said,  by  way  of  opening  the  seminar,  while 
the  motor  behaved  as  if  it  were  trying  to  jiggle 


George  said  that  he  could  take  a  joke,  but  that,  good  night! 
what  was  the  use  of  being  an  ass?" 


its  way  out  from  under  the  cushions  and  bite  me. 
"This  planetary  system  gives  two  forward  speeds 
and  a  reverse  motion." 

"Nothing  could  be  fairer  than  that.  It  sounds 
like  an  almost  perfect  arrangement  to  me,"  I  said, 
to  show  that  I  was  listening.  And  then,  to  show 
that  I  was  thinking  about  the  thing  as  well,  I  asked: 
"  But  surely  you  don't  have  to  pedal  the  thing  along 
[55] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

yourself  by  foot  power!  All  those  pedals  down 
there  would  seem  to  leave  very  little  for  the  gaso- 
line power  to  do." 

"  Those  three  pedals  are  what  do  the  trick,"  ex- 
plained George.  And  then  he  added  ominously:  "  If 
you  should  step  on  that  left-hand  one  now,  you 
would  throw  in  your  clutch." 

"  Please,  George,  don't  get  morbid,"  I  protested. 
"  I'm  nervous  enough  as  it  is,  without  having  to 
worry  about  my  own  bodily  safety." 

"  The  middle  pedal,  marked  '  R,'  is  the  reverse, 
and  the  one  at  the  right,  marked  '  B,'  is  the  foot 
brake.  Now,  when  you  want  to  start — 

"  Just  a  minute,  please,"  I  said  sternly.  "  You 
skip  over  those  as  if  there  were  something  about 
them  you  were  a  little  ashamed  of,  George.  Are 
you  keeping  something  from  me  about  the  reverse 
and  the  foot  brake?  " 

"  I  didn't  know  but  that  somewhere  in  your  valu- 
able college  course  they  taught  you  what  '  reverse ' 
meant,  and  I  was  sure  that  your  little  son  had  told 
you  all  about  the  foot  brake  on  his  express  wagon," 
saifl  George,  waxing  sarcastic  in  the  manner  of  the 
technical  man  that  he  is. 

"  I  don't  want  you  to  take  anything  for  granted 
in  teaching  me  to  run  this  thing,"  I  replied.  "  It 
is  those  little  things  that  count,  you  know,  and  I 
[56] 


LESSON  NUMBER  ONE 

would  feel  just  as  badly  as  you  would  if  I  were  to 
run  your  car  over  a  cliff  into  a  rocky  gorge  be- 
cause of  some  detail  that  I  was  uninformed  about. 
You  know  that,  George." 

"  Very  well,"  he  said,  "  I'll  get  down  to  funda- 
mentals. When  you  push  the  reverse  pedal,  you 
drive  the  car  in  the  opposite  direction  from  that 
in  which  it  is  headed.  This  is  done  by  tightening 
the  external  contracting  clutch  bands  which  are 
between  the  gearing  and  the  disk  clutch." 

Somehow  this  struck  me  as  funny.  The  idea  of 
reversing  by  tightening  any  bands  at  all,  much  less 
external  contracting  ones,  was  the  one  thing  needed 
to  send  me  off  into  roars  of  laughter.  The  whole 
thing  seemed  so  flat,  after  the  excitement  of  the 
war,  and  everything. 

Naturally  George  didn't  get  it.  It  was  'way  over 
his  head,  and  I  knew  that  there  would  be  no  use 
trying  to  explain  it  to  him.  So  I  just  continued  to 
chuckle  and  murmur:  "External  contracting  clutch 
bands!  You'll  be  the  death  of  me  yet,  George!  " 

But  I  felt  that,  as  the  minutes  went  by,  the  situ- 
ation was  getting  strained.  My  instructor  and  I 
were  growing  farther  and  farther  apart  in  spirit, 
and,  after  all,  it  was  his  car  and  he  was  going  to 
considerable  trouble  to  teach  me  to  run  it,  and  the 
least  that  I  could  do  would  be  to  take  him  seriously, 
[57] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

whether  the  thing  struck  me  as  being  sensible  or  not. 

So  I  calmed  myself  with  some  effort,  and  tried 
to  bring  the  conversation  around  to  an  opening  for 
him  to  begin  with  further  explanations. 

"  But,  all  joking  aside,  George,  how  can  you  be 
so  sure  about  these  things?  You  say  that  when  you 
push  the  reverse  pedal  you  tighten  the  external  con- 
tracting clutch  bands.  Did  you  ever  see  them 
tighten?  Or  are  you  taking  some  one's  word  for  it? 
Remember  how  the  German  people  were  deceived 
for  years  by  their  rulers!  Now  supposing — just 
supposing — that  it  had  been  to  some  unscrupulous 
person's  advantage  to  make  you  think  that  the — " 

"Now,  listen,  Bob,"  said  George  (my  name  is 
Bob,  and  I  see  no  reason  why,  simply  because  I  am 
writing  a  piece  about  myself,  I  should  make  be- 
lieve that  my  name  is  Stuart  or  Will,  especially 
as  it  is  right  there  in  black  and  white  at  the  head 
of  the  story.  This  assuming  new  names  on  the  part 
of  authors  is  a  literary  affectation  which  ought  to 
be  done  away  with  once  and  for  all).  "  Now,  listen, 
Bob,"  said  George,  very  quietly  and  very  distinctly, 
"  the  only  thing  for  you  to  do  if  you  are  going  to 
learn  to  run  this  thing,  is  to  get  right  down  to  brass 
tacks  and  run  it,  and  the  sooner  you  try  it,  the 
better." 

"  Oh,  you  practical  guys!  "  I  said.  "  Nothing  will 
[58] 


LESSON  NUMBER  ONE 

do  but  you  must  always  be  getting  down  to  brass 
tacks.  It's  men  like  you  who  are  driving  all  the 
poetry  out  of  the  world." 

"  You  flatter  me,"  said  George,  reaching  bruskly 
across  me  as  if  he  were  after  the  salt  and  pepper, 
and  adjusting  a  couple  of  dingbats  on  the  steering 
wheel.  "  This  here  is  the  spark,  and  this  is  the 
throttle.  The  throttle  governs  the  gas  supply,  and 
the  spark  regulates  the — eh,  well,  it  regulates  the 
spark." 

"  What  won't  these  scientists  think  up  next?  "  I 
marveled.  "  It's  uncanny,  that's  what  it  is — un- 
canny." 

"  Now,  then :  hold  your  foot  on  the  clutch  pedal 
and  keep  her  in  neutral,  while  you  shove  your  hand 
lever  forward  as  far  as  it  will  go.  That's  right!  .  .  . 
That's  fine  .  .  .  'way  forward  .  .  .  now  .  .  .  that's 
right  .  .  .  that's  fine!  " 

I  was  so  encouraged  by  the  way  things  seemed 
to  be  going  that  I  took  all  my  feet  away  from  all 
the  things  they  were  stepping  on,  and  sighed: 

"  Let's  rest  a  minute,  old  man.  I'm  all  of  a 
tremble.  It's  much  easier  than  I  thought,  but  I'd 
rather  take  it  stage  by  stage  than  to  dash  right 
off  the  first  thing." 

The  trouble  seemed  to  be  that,  in  lifting  my  feet, 
I  had  discouraged  the  motor,  which  sighed  and 
[59] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

stopped  functioning,  giving  the  car  a  playful  shake, 
like  an  Erie  local  stopping  at  Babbitt  (N.  J.)  on 
signal.  So  George  said  that,  in  the  future,  no  mat- 
ter how  well  things  seemed  to  be  going,  never  to 
give  in  to  my  emotions  again,  but  keep  right  on 
working,  even  though  it  looked  as  if  I  were  in  dan- 
ger of  becoming  an  expert  driver  in  three  minutes. 
There  is  always  something  to  learn,  he  said.  Then 
he  got  out  and  cranked  the  engine. 

We  went  through  the  same  process  again,  only 
I  kept  my  foot  on  the  vox  humana  pedal  until  I 
had  crammed  it  'way  into  fortissimo.  Then  sud- 
denly a  wonderful  thing  happened.  The  whole 
thing — car,  engine,  George,  and  I — began  to  move, 
all  together.  It  was  a  big  moment  in  my  life.  I 
could  see  the  headlines  in  the  evening  papers: 

YOUNG  SCRIBE  OVERCOMES  NATURAL  LAWS 
Causes  Auto  to  Move  by  Pushing  Pedal 

But  this  elation  was  for  only  a  moment.  For, 
while  we  had  been  arguing,  some  one  had  sneaked 
up  in  front  of  us  and  transplanted  the  hydrangea 
bush  from  the  lawn  at  our  side  to  the  very  middle 
of  the  driveway,  a  silly  place  for  a  hydrangea  bush 
at  best,  but  an  absolutely  fatal  one  at  the  moment 
when  an  automobile  was  being  driven  through  the 
yard. 

[60] 


LESSON  NUMBER  ONE 

It  was  but  the  work  of  a  second  for  me  to  sense 
the  danger.  It  was  but  the  work  of  half  a  second, 
however,  for  us  to  be  rustling  our  way  slowly  and 
lumberingly  into  the  luxuriant  foliage  of  the  bush. 
So  I  was  just  about  half  a  second  late,  which  I  do 
not  consider  bad  for  a  beginner. 

"Put  on  your  brake!  "  shouted  George. 

Quick  as  a  wink  (one  of  those  long  sensuous 
winks)  I  figured  out  which  the  brake  was,  by  find- 
ing the  symbolical  "  B  "  on  the  pedal.  Like  a 
trained  mechanician  I  stepped  on  it. 

"  Release  your  clutch  first,  you  poor  fish!  " 
screamed  George,  above  the  horrible  grinding  noise. 
"Release  your  clutch!  " 

This  was  more  than  flesh  and  blood  could  bear. 
Again  I  relieved  my  feet  from  any  responsibility  in 
the  affair,  and  turned  to  my  instructor. 

"  Don't  shout  so!  "  I  yelled  back  at  him.  "  And 
don't  keep  calling  it  my  clutch !  It  may  be  because 
I  was  brought  up  in  a  Puritan  family,  but  the  whole 
subject  of  clutches  is  a  closed  book  to  me.  If  it 
is  something  I  should  know  about,  you  can  tell 
me  when  we  get  in  the  house.  But,  for  the  pres- 
ent, let's  drop  the  matter.  At  any  rate,  I  stopped 
your  darn  car,  clutch,  or  no  clutch." 

And  so  I  had.  There  we  were,  in  the  middle  of 
the  hydrangea  bush,  very  quiet  and  peaceful,  like 
[61] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

a  couple  of  birds  in  a  bird  house  atop  of  rustling 
oak  (or  maple,  for  that  matter).  Even  the  engine 
had  stopped. 

I  reached  out  and  plucked  a  blossom  that  was 
peeking  over  the  dashboard  where  the  whip  socket 
should  have  been.  After  all,  there  is  no  place  like 
the  country.  I  said  so  to  George,  and  he  tacitly 
agreed.  At  least,  I  took  it  to  be  agreement.  It  was 
certainly  tacit.  I  was  afraid  that  he  was  a  little 
hurt  over  what  I  had  said  about  the  clutch,  and 
so  I  decided  that  it  might  be  best  not  to  mention 
the  subject  again.  In  fact,  it  seemed  wiser  to  get 
away  from  the  topic  of  automobiles  entirely.  So  I 
said  softly: 

"  George,  did  it  ever  occur  to  you  how  the  war 
has  changed  our  daily  life?  Not  only  have  we 
had  to  alter  our  methods  of  provisioning  our  ta- 
bles and  feeding  our  families,  but  we  have  ac- 
quired a  certain  detachment  of  mind,  a  certain  new 
sufficiency  of  spirit." 

(We  had  both  alighted  from  the  car  and  had 
placed  ourselves,  one  on  each  side,  to  roll  it  out 
of  the  embraces  of  the  hydrangea  bush.) 

"  I  have  been  reading  a  book  during  the  past 
week  on  Problems  of  Reconstruction,"  I  continued, 
"  and  I  have  been  impressed  by  the  thought  which 

[62] 


LESSON  NUMBER  ONE 


After  all,  there  is  no  place  like  the  country.    I  said  so  to 
George,  and  he  tacitly  agreed." 


[63] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

is  being  given  to  the  development  of  the  waste  lands 
in  the  West." 

(We  had,  by  this  time,  got  the  car  rolled  out 
into  the  driveway  again.) 

"The  problem  of  the  children,  too,  is  an  ab- 
sorbing one  for  the  years  which  lie  ahead  of  us. 
We  cannot  go  back  to  the  old  methods  of  child 
training,  any  more  than  we  can  go  back  to  the 
old  methods  of  diplomacy.  The  war  has  created 
a  hiatus.  That  which  follows  will  depend  on  the 
zeal  with  which  America  applies  herself  to  her  task 
of  rehabilitation." 

(The  machine  was  now  moored  in  her  parking 
space  by  the  porte-cochere,  and  the  brakes  applied.) 

'•-  Tt  seems  to  me  that  we  are  living  in  a  great 
period  of  transition;  doesn't  it  look  that  way  to 
you,  George?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  George. 

And  so  we  went  into  the  house. 


[64] 


VII 
THOUGHTS  ON  FUEL  SAVING 

/CONSIDERABLE  space  has  been  given  in  the 
\^4  magazines  and  newspapers  this  winter  to  of- 
ficial and  expert  directions  on  How  to  Run  Your 
Furnace  and  Save  Coal — as  if  the  two  things  were 
compatible.  Some  had  accompanying  diagrams  of 
a  furnace  in  its  normal  state,  showing  the  exact 
position  of  the  arteries  and  vitals,  with  arrows  point- 
ing in  interesting  directions,  indicating  the  theoreti- 
cal course  of  the  heat. 

I  have  given  some  time  to  studying  these  charts, 
and  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  when  the  au- 
thors of  such  articles  and  I  speak  the  word  "  fur- 
nace," we  mean  entirely  different  things.  They  are 
referring  to  some  idealized,  sublimated  creation;  per- 
haps the  "  furnace  "  which  existed  originally  in  the 
mind  of  Horace  W.  Furnace,  the  inventor;  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  I  am  referring  to  the  thing  that 
is  in  my  cellar.  No  wonder  that  I  can't  understand 
their  diagrams. 

For  my  own  satisfaction,  therefore,  I  have  drawn 
up  a  few  regulations  which  I  can  understand,  and 
[65] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

have  thrown  them  together  most  informally  for 
whatever  they  may  be  worth.  Any  one  else  who 
has  checked  up  the  official  furnace  instructions  with 
Life  as  it  really  is  and  has  found  something  wrong 
somewhere  may  go  as  far  as  he  likes  with  the  re- 
sults of  my  researches.  I  give  them  to  the  world. 

Saving  coal  is,  just  now,  the  chief  concern  of  most 
householders,  for  we  are  now  entering  that  por- 
tion of  the  solstice  when  it  is  beginning  to  be  neces- 
sary to  walk  some  distance  into  the  bin  after  the 
coal.  When  first  the  list  of  official  admonitions 
were  issued,  early  in  the  season,  it  was  hard 
to  believe  that  they  ever  would  be  needed.  The 
bin  was  so  full  that  it  resembled  a  drug-store  win- 
dow piled  high  with  salted  peanuts.  (As  a  matter 
of  actual  fact,  there  is  probably  nothing  that  coal 
looks  less  like  than  salted  peanuts,  but  the  effect  of 
tremendous  quantity  was  the  same.)  Adventurous 
pieces  were  fairly  popping  out  of  confinement  and 
rolling  over  the  cellar.  It  seemed  as  if  there  were 
enough  coal  there  to  give  the  Leviathan  a  good  run 
for  her  money  and  perhaps  take  her  out  as  far  as 
Bedloe  Island.  A  fig  for  coal-saving  devices! 

But  now  the  season  is  well  on,  and  the  bad  news 

is  only  too  apparent.    The  householder,  as  he  finds 

himself  walking  farther  and  farther  into  the  bin 

after  the  next  shovelful,  realizes  that  soon  will  come 

[66] 


THOUGHTS  ON  FUEL  SAVING 

the  time  when  it  will  be  necessary  to  scrape  the 
leavings  into  a  corner,  up  against  the  side  of  the  bin, 
and  to  coal  his  fire,  piece  by  piece,  between  his  finger 
and  thumb,  while  waiting  for  the  dealer  to  deliver 
that  next  load,  "  right  away,  probably  to-day,  to- 
morrow at  the  latest." 

It  is  therefore  essential  that  we  turn  constructive 
thought  to  the  subject  of  coal  conservation.  I  would 
suggest,  in  the  first  place,  an  exact  aim  in  shovel- 
ing coal  into  the  fire  box. 

By  this  I  mean  the  cultivation  of  an  exact  aim  in 
shoveling  coal  into  the  fire  box.  In  my  own  case  (if 
I  may  be  permitted  to  inject  the  personal  element 
into  this  article  for  one  second),  I  know  that  it 
often  happens  that,  when  I  have  a  large  shovelful  of 
coal  in  readiness  for  the  fire,  and  the  door  to  the 
fire  box  open  as  wide  as  it  will  go,  there  may  be, 
nevertheless,  the  variation  of  perhaps  an  eighth 
of  an  inch  between  the  point  where  the  shovel 
should  have  ended  the  arc  in  its  forward  swing  and 
the  point  at  which  it  actually  stops.  In  less  tech- 
nical phraseology,  I  sometimes  tick  the  edge  of  the 
shovel  against  the  threshold  of  the  fire  box,  in- 
stead of  shooting  it  over  as  should  be  done.  Now, 
as  I  usually  take  a  rather  long,  low  swing,  with 
considerable  power  behind  it  (if  I  do  say  so),  the 
sudden  contact  of  the  shovel  with  the  threshold  re- 
[67] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

suits  in  a  forceful  projection  of  the  many  pieces 
of  coal  (and  whatever  else  it  is  that  comes  with  the 
coal  for  good  measure)  into  all  corners  of  the  cel- 
lar. I  have  seen  coal  fly  from  my  shovel  under 


'  In  less  technicaf  language,  I  sometimes  tick  the  edge  of  the 
shovel  against  the  threshold  of  the  fire  box." 


such  circumstances  with  such  velocity  as  to  land 
among  the  preserves  at  the  other  end  of  the  cellar 
and  in  the  opposite  direction  from  which  I  was 
facing. 

Now,  this  is  obviously  a  waste  of  coal.    It  would 
be  impossible  to  stoop  all  about  the  cellar  pick- 
ing up  the  vagrant  pieces  that  had  flown  away, 
even  if  the  blow  of  the  shovel  against  the  furnace 
[68] 


THOUGHTS  ON  FUEL  SAVING 

had  not  temporarily  paralyzed  your  hand  and  caused 
you  to  devote  your  entire  attention  to  the  coining 
of  new  and  descriptive  word  pictures. 

I  would  suggest,  for  this  trouble,  the  taking  of  a 
"  stance  "  in  front  of  the  fire  box,  with  perhaps  chalk 
markings  for  guidance  of  the  feet  at  just  the  right 
distance  away.  Then  a  series  of  preparatory  swings, 
as  in  driving  off  in  golf,  first  with  the  empty  shovel, 
then  with  a  gradually  increasing  amount  of  coal. 
The  only  danger  in  this  would  be  that  you  might 
bring  the  handle  of  the  shovel  back  against  an  ash 
can  or  something  behind  you  and  thus  spill  about 
as  much  coal  as  before.  But  there,  there — if  you 
are  going  to  borrow  trouble  like  that,  you  might  as 
well  give  up  right  now. 

Another  mishap  of  a  somewhat  similar  nature 
occurs  when  a  shovelful  of  ashes  from  under  the 
grate  is  hit  against  the  projecting  shaker,  causing 
the  ashes  to  scatter  over  the  floor  and  the  shoes. 
This  is  a  very  discouraging  thing  to  have  happen, 
for,  as  the  ashes  are  quite  apt  to  contain  at  least 
three  or  four  pieces  of  unburnt  coal,  it  means  that 
those  pieces  are  as  good  as  lost  unless  you  have 
time  to  hunt  them  up.  It  also  means  shining  the 
shoes  again. 

I  find  that  an  efficacious  preventive  for  this  is  to 
take  the  shaker  off  when  it  is  not  in  use  and  stand 
[69] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

it  in  the  corner.  There  the  worst  thing  that  it  can 
do  is  to  fall  over  against  your  shins  when  you  are 
rummaging  around  for  the  furnace-bath-brush 
among  the  rest  of  the  truck  that  hangs  on  the 
wall. 

And,  by  the  way,  there  are  at  least  two  pieces  of 
long-handled  equipment  hanging  on  my  cellar  wall 
(items  in  the  estate  of  the  former  tenant,  who  must 
have  been  a  fancier  of  some  sort)  whose  use  I  have 
never  been  able  to  figure  out.  I  have  tried  them  on 
various  parts  of  the  furnace  at  one  time  or  another, 
but,  as  there  is  not  much  of  anything  that  one  on 
the  outside  of  a  furnace  can  do  but  poke,  it  seems 
rather  silly  to  have  half  a  dozen  niblick-pokers  and 
midiron-pokers  with  which  to  do  it.  One  of  these, 
resembling  in  shape  a  bridge,  such  as  is  used  on  all 
occasions  by  novices  at  pool,  I  experimented  with 
one  night  and  got  it  so  tightly  caught  in  back  of 
the  grate  somewhere  that  I  had  to  let  the  fire  go  out 
and  take  the  dead  coals  out,  piece  by  piece,  through 
the  door  in  order  to  get  at  the  captive  instrument 
and  release  it.  And,  of  course,  all  this  experimenting 
wasted  coal. 

The  shaker  is,  however,  an  important  factor  in 
keeping  the  furnace  going,  for  it  is  practically  the 
only  recourse  in  dislodging  clinkers  which  have  be- 
come stuck  in  the  grate — that  is,  unless  you  can  kick 


THOUGHTS  ON  FUEL  SAVING 

the  furnace  hard  enough  to  shake  them  down.  I 
have,  in  moments  when,  I  am  afraid,  I  was  not 
quite  myself,  kicked  the  furnace  with  considerable 
force,  but  I  never  could  see  that  it  had  any  effect 
on  the  clinker.  This,  however,  is  no  sign  that  it 
can't  be  done.  I  would  be  the  first  one  to  wish 
a  man  well  who  did  it. 

But,  ordinarily,  the  shaker  is  the  accepted  agent 
for  teaching  the  clinker  its  place.  And,  in  the  fancy 
assorted  coal  in  vogue  this  season  (one-third  coal, 
one-third  slate,  and  one-third  rock  candy)  clinkers 
are  running  the  combustible  matter  a  slightly  bet- 
ter than  even  race.  This  problem  is,  therefore,  one 
which  must  be  faced. 

I  find  that  a  great  deal  of  satisfaction,  if  not  tan- 
gible results,  can  be  derived  from  personifying  the 
furnace  and  the  recalcitrant  clinker,  and  endowing 
them  with  human  attributes,  such  as  fear,  chagrin, 
and  susceptibility  to  physical  and  mental  pain.  In 
this  fanciful  manner  the  thing  can  be  talked  to  as 
if  it  were  a  person,  in  this  way  lending  a  zest  to 
the  proceedings  which  would  be  entirely  lacking  in 
a  contest  with  an  inanimate  object. 

Thus,  when  it  is  discovered  that  the  grate  is 
stuck,  you  can  say,  sotto  voce: 

"  Ho,  ho!  you  *********  5  So  that's  your 
game,  is  it?  " 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

(I  would  not  attempt  to  dictate  the  particular 
epithets.  Each  man  knows  so  much  better  than 
any  one  else  just  what  gives  him  the  most  com- 
fort in  this  respect  that  it  would  be  presumptuous 
to  lay  down  any  formula.  Personally,  I  have  a 
wonderful  set  of  remarks  and  proper  names  which 
I  picked  up  one  summer  from  a  lobster  man  in 
Maine,  which  for  soul-satisfying  blasphemy  are  ab- 
solutely unbeatable.  I  will  be  glad  to  furnish  this 
set  to  any  one  sending  a  stamped,  self-addressed 
envelope.) 

You  then  seize  the  shaker  with  both  hands  and 
give  it  a  vicious  yank,  muttering  between  your 
teeth: 

"  We'll  see,  my  fine  fellow!    We'll  see!  " 

This  is  usually  very  effective  hi  weakening  the 
morale  of  the  clinker,  for  it  then  realizes  right  at 
the  start  that  it  is  pitted  against  a  man  who  is  not 
to  be  trifled  with. 

This  should  be  followed  by  several  short  and 
powerful  yanks,  punctuated  on  the  catch  of  each 
stroke  with  a  muttered:  "  You  *********  j» 

If  you  are  short  of  wind,  the  force  of  this  ejacu- 
lation may  diminish  as  the  yanks  increase  in  num- 
ber, in  which  case  it  will  be  well  to  rest  for  a  few 
seconds. 

At  this  point  a  little  strategy  may  be  brought 
[72] 


THOUGHTS  ON  FUEL  SAVING 

to  bear.  You  can  turn  away,  as  if  you  were  de- 
feated, perhaps  saying  loudly,  so  that  the  clinker 
can  hear:  "Ho-hum!  Well,  I  guess  I'll  call  it  a 
day,"  and  pretend  to  start  upstairs. 

Then,  quick  as  a  wink,  you  should  turn  and  leap 
back  at  the  shaker,  and,  before  the  thing  can  re- 
cover from  its  surprise,  give  it  a  yank  which  will 


;  Quick  as  a  wink  you  should  turn  and  leap  back  at  the  shaker.' 


either  rip  it  from  its  moorings  or  cause  your  own 
vertebrae  to  change  places  with  a  sharp  click.  It  is 
a  fifty-fifty  chance. 

But  great  caution  should  be  observed  before  try- 
ing these  heroic  measures  to  make  sure  that  the  pins 
which  hold  the  shaker  in  place  are  secure.    A  loos- 
[73] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

ened  pin  will  stand  just  so  much  shaking,  and  then 
it  will  unostentatiously  work  its  way  out  and  look 
around  for  something  else  to  do.  This  always  causes 
an  awkward  situation,  for  the  yank  next  following 
the  walkout  of  the  pin,  far  from  accomplishing  its 
purpose  of  dispossessing  the  clinker,  will  precipi- 
tate you  over  backward  among  the  ash  cans  with  a 
viciousness  in  which  it  is  impossible  not  to  detect 
something  personal. 

Immediately  following  such  a  little  upset  to  one's 
plans,  it  is  perhaps  the  natural  impulse  to  arise  in 
somewhat  of  a  pet  and  to  set  about  exacting  puni- 
tive indemnities.  This  does  not  pay  in  the  end. 
If  you  hit  any  exposed  portion  of  the  furnace  with 
the  shaker  the  chances  are  that  you  will  break 
it,  which,  while  undoubtedly  very  painful  to  the 
furnace  at  the  time,  would  eventually  necessitate 
costly  repairs.  And,  if  you  throw  coal  at  it,  you 
waste  coal.  This,  if  you  remember,  is  an  article  on 
how  to  save  coal. 

Another  helpful  point  is  to  prevent  the  fire  from 
going  out.  This  may  be  accomplished  in  one  way 
that  I  am  sure  of.  That  is,  by  taking  a  book,  or 
a  ouija  board,  or  some  other  indoor  entertainment 
downstairs  and  sitting  two  feet  away  from  the  fur- 
nace all  day,  being  relieved  by  your  wife  at  night 
(or,  needless  to  say,  vice  versa).  I  have  never 
[741 


THOUGHTS  ON  FUEL  SAVING 

known  this  method  of  keeping  the  fire  alive  to 
fail,  except  when  the  watcher  dropped  off  to  sleep 
for  ten  or  fifteen  minutes.  This  is  plenty  of  time 
for  a  raging  fire  to  pass  quietly  away,  and  I  can 
prove  it. 

Of  course  this  treatment  cuts  in  on  your  social 
life,  but  I  know  of  nothing  else  that  is  infallible. 
I  know  of  nothing  else  that  can  render  impossi- 
ble that  depressing  foreboding  given  expression  by 
your  wife  when  she  says:  "  Have  you  looked  at  the 
fire  lately?  It's  getting  chilly  here,"  followed  by 
the  apprehensive  trip  downstairs,  eagerly  listening 
for  some  signs  of  caloric  life  from  within  the 
asbestos-covered  tomb;  the  fearful  pause  before 
opening  the  door,  hoping  against  hope  that  the  next 
move  will  disclose  a  ruddy  glow  which  can  easily  be 
nursed  back  to  health,  but  feeling,  in  the  intuitive 
depths  of  your  soul,  that  you  might  just  as  well 
begin  crumpling  up  last  Sunday's  paper  to  ignite, 
for  the  Grim  Reaper  has  passed  this  way. 

And  then  the  cautious  pull  at  the  door,  opening 
it  inch  by  inch,  until  the  bitter  truth  is  disclosed — 
a  yawning  cavern  of  blackness  with  the  dull,  gray 
outlines  of  consumed  coals  in  the  foreground,  a  dis- 
mal double-play:  ashes  to  ashes. 

These  little  thoughts  on  furnace  tending  and  coal 
conservation  are  not  meant  to  be  taken  as  in  any 
[75] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

sense  final.  Some  one  else  may  have  found  the 
exact  converse  to  be  true;  in  which  case  he  would 
do  well  to  make  a  scientific  account  of  it  as  I  have 
done.  It  helps  to  buy  coal. 


VIII 
NOT  ACCORDING  TO  HOYLE 

I  HAVE  just  finished  reading  an  article  by  an  ex- 
pert in  auction  bridge,  and  it  has  left  me  in  a 
cold  sweat.  As  near  as  I  can  make  out,  it  presup- 
poses that  every  one  who  plays  bridge  knows  what 
he  is  doing  before  he  does  it,  which  simply  means 
that  I  have  been  going  along  all  this  time  working 
on  exactly  the  wrong  theory.  It  may  incidentally 
explain  why  I  have  never  been  voted  the  most 
popular  bridge  player  in  Wimblehurst  or  presented 
with  a  loving  cup  by  admiring  members  of  the 
Neighborhood  Club. 

Diametrically  opposed  to  the  system  of  "  think- 
before-you-play,"  advocated  by  this  expert,  my  game 
has  been  built  up  purely  on  intuition.  I  rely  almost 
entirely  on  the  inner  promptings  of  the  moment  in 
playing  a  card.  I  don't  claim  that  there  is  anything 
spiritualistic  about  it,  for  it  does  not  work  out  with 
consistent  enough  success  to  be  in  any  way  uncanny. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  causes  me  a  lot  of  trouble. 
When  one  relies  on  instinct  to  remind  one  of  what 
the  trumps  are,  or  how  many  of  them  have  been 
[771 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

played,  there  is  bound  to  be  a  slip-up  every  so  often. 

But  what  chagrins  me,  after  reading  the  expert's 
article,  is  the  thought  that  all  this  while  I  may  have 
been  playing  with  people  who  were  actually  thinking 
the  thing  out  beforehand  in  a  sordid  sort  of  way, 
counting  the  trumps  played  and  figuring  on  who  had 
the  queen  or  where  the  ten-spot  lay.  I  didn't  think 
there  were  such  people  in  the  world. 

Here  I  have  been  going  ahead,  in  an  honest, 
hail-fellow-well-met  mood,  sometimes  following  suit, 
sometimes  trumping  my  partner's  trick,  always  tak- 
ing it  for  granted  that  the  idea  was  to  get  the  hand 
played  as  quickly  as  possible  in  order  to  talk  it  over 
and  tell  each  other  how  it  might  have  been  done 
differently. 

It  is  true  that,  now  and  again,  I  have  noticed 
sharp  looks  directed  at  me  by  my  various  partners, 
but  I  have  usually  attributed  them  to  a  little  man- 
nerism I  have  of  humming  softly  while  playing,  and 
I  have  always  stopped  humming  whenever  my  part- 
ner showed  signs  of  displeasure,  being  perfectly 
willing  to  meet  any  one  halfway  in  an  effort  to 
make  the  evening  a  pleasant  one  for  all  concerned. 
But  now  I  am  afraid  that  perhaps  the  humming 
was  only  a  minor  offense.  I  am  appalled  at  the 
thought  of  what  really  was  the  trouble. 

I  should  never  have  allowed  myself  to  be  dragged 


NOT  ACCORDING  TO  HOYLE 

into  it  at  all.  My  first  big  mistake  was  made  when, 
in  a  moment  of  weakness,  I  consented  to  learn  the 
game;  for  a  man  who  can  frankly  say  "I  do  not 
play  bridge  "  is  allowed  to  go  over  in  the  corner 


"Attributed  them  to  a  little  man- 
nerism I  have  of  humming  softly 
while  playing." 

and  run  the  pianola  by  himself,  while  the  poor 
neophyte,  no  matter  how  much  he  may  protest  that 
he  isn't  "  at  all  a  good  player,  in  fact,  I'm  perfectly 
rotten,"  is  never  believed,  but  dragged  into  a  game 
where  it  is  discovered,  too  late,  that  he  spoke  the 
truth. 

[79] 


OF  ALL  THINGS  1 

But  it  was  a  family  affair  at  first.  Dora  belonged 
to  a  whist  club  which  met  every  Friday  afternoon 
on  strictly  partizan  lines,  except  for  once  a  year, 
when  they  asked  the  men  in.  My  experience  with 
this  organization  had  been  necessarily  limited,  as 
it  held  its  sessions  during  my  working  hours.  Once 
in  a  while,  however,  I  would  get  home  in  time  to 
meet  in  the  front  hall  the  stragglers  who  were  just 
leaving,  amid  a  general  searching  for  furs  and  over- 
shoes, and  for  some  unaccountable  reason  I  usu- 
ally felt  very  foolish  on  such  occasions.  Certainly 
I  had  a  right,  under  the  Common  Law,  to  be  com- 
ing in  my  own  front  door,  but  I  always  had  a  sneak- 
ing feeling,  there  in  the  midst  of  the  departing  guests, 
that  the  laugh  was  on  me. 

One  Friday,  when  I  was  confined  to  my  room  with 
a  touch  of  neuralgia  (it  was  in  my  face,  if  you  are 
interested,  and  the  whole  right  side  swelled  up  until 
it  was  twice  its  normal  size — I'd  like  to  tell  you  more 
about  it  some  time),  I  could  hear  the  sounds  of 
carnival  going  on  downstairs.  The  noises  made  by 
women  playing  bridge  are  distinctive.  At  first  the 
listener  is  aware  of  a  sort  of  preliminary  conversa- 
tional murmur,  with  a  running  accompaniment  of 
shuffling  pasteboards.  Then  follows  an  unnatural 
quiet,  punctuated  by  the  thud  of  jeweled  knuckles 
or  the  clank  of  bracelets  as  the  cards  are  played 
[80] 


NOT  ACCORDING  TO  HOYLE 

against  the  baize,  with  now  and  then  little  squeals 
of  dismay  or  delight  from  some  of  the  more  demon- 
strative and  an  occasional  "  Good  for  you,  partner!  " 
from  an  appreciative  dummy.  Gradually,  as  the 
hand  draws  toward  its  close,  there  begins  a  low 
sound,  like  the  murmurings  of  the  stage  mob  in 
the  wings,  which  rapidly  increases,  until  the  room 
is  filled  with  a  shrill  chatter,  resembling  that  in  the 
Bird  House  in  Central  Park,  from  which  there  is 
distinguishable  merely  a  wild  medley: 

"  If  you  had  led  me  your  queen — was  so  afraid 
she  might  trump  in  with — my  dear,  I  didn't  have  a 
face  card  in  my — threw  away  just  the  wrong — had 
the  jack,  10,  9,  and  7 — thought  Alice  had  the 
king — ace  and  three  little  ones — how  about  honors? 
— my  dear,  simply  frightful — if  you  had  returned  my 
lead — my  dear!  " 

This  listening  in  at  bridge,  however,  was  the  near- 
est I  had  ever  been  to  the  front,  until  it  came  time 
for  the  Friday  Afternoon  Club  to  let  down  the  bars 
and  have  a  Men's  Night.  I  had  no  illusions  about 
this  "  Men's  Night,"  but  it  was  a  case  of  my  learn- 
ing to  play  bridge  and  accompanying  Dora,  or  of 
her  getting  some  man  in  from  off  the  sidewalk  to 
take  my  place,  and  I  figured  that  it  would  cause  less 
talk  if  I  were  there  to  play  myself.  As  I  think  it 
over  now,  I  feel  that  the  strange-man  scheme  might 
[81] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

have  worked  out  with  less  comment  being  made  than 
my  playing  drew  down. 

But  it  was  for  this  purpose  that  I  allowed  myself 
to  be  instructed  in  the  rudiments  of  bridge.  I  had 
nothing  permanent  in  mind  in  absorbing  these  prin- 
ciples, fully  expecting  to  forget  them  again  the  day 
after  the  party.  I  miscalculated  by  about  one  day, 
it  now  seems. 

The  expert,  whose  article  has  been  such  an  in- 
spiration to  me,  had  some  neat  little  diagrams  drawn 
for  him,  showing  just  where  the  cards  lay  in  the 
four  hands,  and  with  the  players  indicated  as  A, 
B,  Y,  and  Z;  apparently  the  same  people,  come  up 
in  the  world,  who,  in  our  algebras  some  years  ago, 
used  to  buy  and  sell  apples  to  each  other  with  fev- 
erish commercialism  and  to  run  races  with  all  sorts 
of  unfair  handicaps.  What  a  small  world  it  is, 
after  all! 

It  seems  to  me,  therefore,  that,  since  this  is  a 
pretty  fairly  technical  article,  it  might  be  well  if  I 
were  to  utilize  the  same  diagrammatic  device  and 
terse  method  of  description,  to  show  the  exact  course 
of  the  first  hand  in  which  I  participated  at  the  party. 

A  and  B  are  our  opponents,  X  my  partner,  and 

I  (oddly  enough)  myself.    A  is  Ralph  Thibbets,  one 

of  those  cool  devils  who  think  they  know  all  about 

a  game,  and  usually  do.    He  has  an  irritating  way 

[82] 


NOT  ACCORDING  TO  HOYLE 

of  laying  down  his  cards,  when  the  hand  is  about 
half  played,  and  saying:  "  Well,  the  rest  are  mine," 
and  the  most  irritating  part  of  it  all  is  that,  when 
you  have  insisted  on  figuring  it  out  for  yourself,  he 
is  found  to  be  right.  I  disliked  him  from  the  first. 

B  is  Mrs.  Lucas,  who  breathes  hard  and  says 
nothing,  but  clanks  her  cards  down  with  finality, 
seeming  to  say:  "That  for  you!  "  She  got  me 
nervous. 

X,  my  partner,  used  to  be  a  good  friend  of  mine. 
And,  so  far  as  I  am  concerned,  I  would  be  per- 
fectly willing  to  let  bygones  be  bygones  and  be  on 
friendly  terms  again. 

In  utilizing  the  expert's  method  of  description,  I 
shall  improve  on  it  slightly  by  also  indicating  the 
conversation  accompanying  each  play,  a  feature 
which  is  of  considerable  importance  in  a  game. 

B  deals,  and  finally  makes  it  three  diamonds,  after 
X  has  tried  to  bid  hearts  without  encouragement 
from  me.  I  pass  as  a  matter  of  principle,  not  be- 
ing at  all  sure  of  this  bidding  proposition. 

I  lead,  with  a  clear  field  and  no  particular  object 
in  view,  the  8  of  diamonds.  It  looks  as  uncom- 
promising as  any  card  in  my  hand.  "  Leading 
trumps!  "  says  X  with  a  raising  of  the  eyebrows. 
"  What  do  you  know  about  that!  "  I  exclaim.  "  I 
had  forgotten  that  they  were  trumps.  I  must  be 
[83] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

asleep.  Like  the  old  Irishman  when  St.  Peter  asked 
him  where  he  came  from,  and  he  said:  '  Begorra — '  " 
A  cuts  this  story  short  by  playing  the  3  of  dia- 
monds; X,  with  some  asperity,  discards  the  3  of 
spades,  and  B  takes  the  trick  with  the  ro-spot. 
Silence. 

"  That  story  of  the  Irishman  and  St.  Peter,"  I 
continue,  "  was  told  to  me  by  a  fellow  in  Buffalo 
last  week  who  had  just  come  from  France.  He 
said  that  while  he  was  in  a  place  called  '  Mousong,' 
or  '  Mousang,'  he  actually  saw — " 

"  Your  play,"  says  X.  "  Oh,  I  beg  your  pardon," 
I  say,  "  whose  jack  of  spades  is  that?  "  "  Mine," 
says  B,  drumming  on  the  table  with  her  finger 
nails  and  looking  about  the  room  at  the  pictures. 
Having  more  poor  diamonds  than  anything  else  in 
my  hand,  and  aiming  to  get  them  out  of  the  way 
as  soon  as  possible  to  give  the  good  cards  a  chance, 
I  play  the  5  of  diamonds. 

"  What,  trumping  it?  Have  you  no  spades?  " 
shouts  A.  I  can  see  that  I  have  him  rattled;  so, 
although,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I  have  got  plenty  of 
spades,  I  smile  knowingly  and  sit  tight.  These 
smart  Alecs  make  me  sick,  telling  me  what  I  should 
play  and  what  I  should  not  play.  A  accepts  the 
inevitable  and  plays  his  2 -spot.  X,  considerably 
cheered  up,  plays  the  4  and  says:  "  Our  trick, 
[84] 


NOT  ACCORDING  TO  HOYLE 

partner."  I  pick  up  the  cards  and  mix  them  with 
those  already  in  my  hand,  reverting,  for  the  time, 
to  poker  tactics.  This  error,  alone  among  all  that 
I  make  during  the  game,  is  unobserved. 

"  Well,  I  suppose  that  you  people  are  all  ex- 
cited over  that  new  baby  up  at  your  house,"  I  say 
pleasantly  to  A,  just  to  show  him  that  I  can  be 
gracious  in  victory  as  well  as  in  defeat.  "Let's 
see,  is  it  a  boy  or  a  girl?  " 

"  It's  your  lead!  "  he  replies  shortly. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  I  say;  "  I  certainly  must  be 
asleep  to-night."  And,  as  my  thumb  is  on  the  5 
of  diamonds,  I  lead  it. 

"Here,  here!"  says  A,  "wasn't  it  the  5  of 
diamonds  that  you  trumped  in  with  just  a  minute 
ago?  "  That  man  has  second-sight.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  I  suspect  that  there  is  something  crooked 
about  him.  "  Yes,  it  is,"  corroborates  B  in  her  long- 
est speech  of  the  evening.  X  says:  "Where  is  that 
trick  that  we  took?  "  And  then  it  is  discovered 
that  it  has  found  its  way  into  my  hand,  from  which 
it  is  disentangled  with  considerable  trouble  and 
segregated.  As  for  me,  I  pass  the  whole  thing 
off  as  a  joke. 

"  I  saw  in  the  paper  this  morning,"  I  began 
when  the  situation  has  become  a  little  less  compli- 
cated, "where  a  woman  in  Perth  Amboy  found  a 
[85] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 


' '  Here,  here ! '  says  A,  '  wasn't  it  the  5  of  diamonds  you 
trumped  in  with  a  minute  ago?'" 


[86] 


NOT  ACCORDING  TO  HOYLE 

hundred  dollars  in  the  lining  of  an  old  lounge  in — n 

"  It's  your  lead,  if  you  don't  mind,"  says  A  very 
distinctly.  "  You  have  made  only  one  false  start 
out  of  a  possible  three.  Try  again."  I  pretend  not 
to  hear  this  sarcasm,  and,  just  to  show  him  that 
there  is  life  in  the  old  dog  yet,  I  lead  my  ace  of 
spades. 

"Look  here,  my  dear  sir!  "  says  A,  quite  upset 
by  now.  "  Only  one  hand  ago  you  refused  spades 
and  trumped  them.  That  revoking  on  your  part 
gives  us  three  tricks  and  we  throw  up  the  hand." 

"  Fair  enough,"  I  retort  cheerfully,  "  three  is  just 
what  you  bid,  isn't  it?  Quite  a  coincidence,  I  call 
it,"  and  with  that  I  throw  my  cards  on  the  table 
with  considerable  relief.  Nothing  good  could  have 
come  of  this  hand,  even  if  we  had  played  until  mid- 
night. 

From  all  sides  now  arose  the  familiar  sounds  of 
the  post-mortem:  "  I  had  the  jack,  10,  9,  and  7,  all 
good,  but  I  just  couldn't  get  in  with  them.  ...  If 
you  had  only  led  me  your  king,  we  could  have  set 
them  at  least  two.  ...  I  knew  that  Grace  had  the 
queen,  but  I  didn't  dare  try  to  finesse.  .  .  .  We  had 
simple  honors.  ...  As  soon  as  I  saw  you  leading 
spades,  I  knew  that  there  was  nothing  in  it,"  etc., 
etc. 

But  at  our  table  there  was  no  post-mortem.  Not 
[87] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

because  there  had  been  no  death,  but  there  seemed 
to  be  nothing  to  say  about  it.  So  we  sat,  marking 
down  our  scores,  until  Dora  came  up  behind  me  and 
said:  "  Well,  dear,  how  is  your  game  coming  on?  " 

As  no  one  else  seemed  about  to  speak,  I  said: 
"  Oh,  finely,  I'm  getting  the  hang  of  it  in  no  time." 

My  partner  muttered  something  about  hanging 
being  too  good,  which  seemed  a  bit  uncalled  for. 

And  so  I  went  through  the  evening,  meeting  new 
people  and  making  new  friends.  And,  owing  to 
Dora's  having  neglected  to  teach  me  the  details  of 
score  keeping,  I  had  to  make  a  system  up  for  my- 
self, with  the  result  that  I  finished  the  evening  with 
a  total  of  15,000  points  on  my  card  and  won  the  first 
prize. 

"  Beginner's  luck,"  I  called  it  with  modest  good 
nature. 


[88] 


IX 
FROM  NINE  TO  FIVE 

ONE  of  the  necessary  qualifications  of  an  effi- 
cient business  man  in  these  days  of  indus- 
trial literature  seems  to  be  the  ability  to  write,  in 
clear  and  idiomatic  English,  a  i,ooo-word  story  on 
how  efficient  he  is  and  how  he  got  that  way.  A 
glance  through  any  one  of  our  more  racy  commer- 
cial magazines  will  serve  nicely  to  illustrate  my  point, 
for  it  was  after  glancing  through  one  of  them  only 
five  minutes  ago  that  the  point  suggested  itself  to 
me. 

"  What  Is  Making  Our  Business  Grow;  "  "  My 
$10,000  System  of  Carbon-Copy  Hunting;  "  "  Mak- 
ing the  Turn-Over  Turn  In;  "  "  If  I  Can  Make  My 
Pencil  Sharpenings  Work,  Why  Can't  You?  "  "  Get- 
ting Sales  Out  of  Sahara,"  etc.,  are  some  of  the  in- 
triguing titles  which  catch  the  eye  of  the  student 
of  world  affairs  as  he  thumbs  over  the  business 
magazines  on  the  news-stands  before  buying  his 
newspaper.  It  seems  as  if  the  entire  business  world 
were  devoting  its  working  hours  to  the  creation  of 
a  school  of  introspective  literature. 
[89] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

But  the  trouble  with  these  writers  is  that  they  are 
all  successful.  There  is  too  much  sameness  to  their 
stuff.  They  have  their  little  troubles  at  first,  it  is 
true,  such  as  lack  of  coordination  in  the  central  typ- 
ing department,  or  congestion  of  office  boys  in  the 
room  where  the  water  cooler  is  situated;  but  sooner 
or  later  you  may  be  perfectly  sure  that  Right  will 
triumph  and  that  the  young  salesman  will  bring 
in  the  order  that  puts  the  firm  back  on  its  feet 
again.  They  seem  to  have  no  imagination,  these 
writers  of  business  confessions.  What  the  art  needs 
is  some  Strindberg  of  Commerce  to  put  down  on 
paper  the  sordid  facts  of  Life  as  they  really  are, 
and  to  show,  in  bitter  words  of  cynical  realism, 
that  ink  erasers  are  not  always  segregated  or  vouch- 
ers always  all  that  they  should  be,  and  that,  be- 
hind the  happy  exterior  of  many  a  mahogany  rail- 
ing, all  is  not  so  gosh-darned  right  with  the  world 
after  all. 

Now,  without  setting  myself  up  as  a  Strindberg,  I 
would  like  to  start  the  ball  rolling  toward  a  more 
realistic  school  of  business  literature  by  setting  down 
in  my  rough,  impulsive  way  a  few  of  the  items  in 
the  account  of  "  How  We  Make  Our  Business  Lose 
$100,000  a  Year." 

All  that  I  ask  in  the  way  of  equipment  is  an 
illustration  showing  a  square-jawed,  clean-cut  Amer- 
[90] 


FROM  NINE  TO  FIVE 

ican  business  man  sitting  at  a  desk  and  shaking  his 
finger  at  another  man,  very  obviously  the  head  of 
the  sales  department  because  it  says  so  under  the 
picture,  who  is  standing  with  his  thumbs  in  the  arm- 


'A  square-jawed  American  business  man,  etc.,  shaking  his 
finger  at  another." 


holes  of  his  waistcoat,  gnawing  at  a  big,  black  cigar, 
and  looking  out  through  the  window  at  the  smoke- 
stacks of  the  works.  With  this  picture  as  a  starter, 
and  a  chart  or  two,  I  can  build  up  a  very  decent 
business  story  around  them. 

In  the  first  place  let  me  say  that  what  we  have 
done  in  our  business  any  firm  can  do  in  theirs.  It 
is  not  that  we  have  any  extraordinary  talents  along 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

organization  lines.  We  simply  have  taken  the  les- 
sons learned  in  everyday  trading,  have  tabulated 
and  filed  them  in  triplicate.  Then  we  have  forgotten 
them. 

I  can  best  give  an  idea  of  the  secret  of  our  medi- 
ocrity as  a  business  organization  by  outlining  a 
typical  day  in  our  offices.  I  do  this  in  no  spirit 
of  boasting,  but  simply  to  show  these  thousands  of 
systematized  business  men  who  are  devoting  them- 
selves to  literature  that  somewhere  in  all  this  miasma 
of  success  there  shines  a  ray  of  inefficiency,  giving 
promise  of  the  day  that  is  to  come. 

The  first  part  of  the  morning  in  our  establish- 
ment is  devoted  to  the  mail.  This  starts  the  day 
off  right,  for  it  gives  every  one  something  to  do, 
which  is,  I  have  found,  a  big  factor  in  keeping  the 
place  looking  busy. 

Personally  I  am  not  what  is  known  as  a  "  snappy  " 
dictator.  It  makes  me  nervous  to  have  a  stenog- 
rapher sitting  there  waiting  for  me  to  say  some- 
thing so  that  she  can  pounce  on  it  and  tear  it  into 
hieroglyphics.  I  feel  that,  mentally,  she  is  checking 
me  up  with  other  men  who  have  dictated  to  her,  and 
that  I  am  being  placed  in  Class  sa,  along  with  the 
licensed  pilots  and  mental  defectives,  and  the  more 
I  think  of  it  the  more  incoherent  I  become.  If  ex- 
act and  detailed  notes  were  to  be  preserved  of  one 
[92] 


FROM  NINE  TO  FIVE 

of  my  dictated  letters,  mental  processes,  and  all, 
they  might  read  something  like  this: 

"  Good  morning,  Miss  Kettle.  .  .  .  Take  a  letter, 
please  ...  to  the  Nipco  Drop  Forge  and  Tool 
Company,  Schenectady  .  .  .  S-c-h-e-c  —  er  —  well, 
Schenectady;  you  know  how  to  spell  that,  I  guess, 
Miss  Kettle,  ha!  ha!  .  .  .  Nipco  Drop  Forge  and 
Tool  Company,  Schenectady,  New  York.  .  .  .  Gen- 
tlemen— er  (business  of  touching  finger  tips  and 
looking  at  the  ceiling  meditatively) — Your  favor  of 
the  i  yth  inst.  at  hand,  and  in  reply  would  state  that 
— er  (I  should  have  thought  this  letter  out  before 
beginning  to  dictate  and  decided  just  what  it  is 
that  we  desire  to  state  in  reply) — and  in  reply  would 
state  that — er  .  .  .  our  Mr.  Mellish  reports  that — 
er  .  .  .  where  is  that  letter  from  Mr.  Mellish,  Miss 
Kettle?  .  .  .  The  one  about  the  castings.  ...  Oh, 
never  mind,  I  guess  I  can  remember  what  he  said. 
.  .  .  Let's  see,  where  were  we?  ...  Oh,  yes,  that 
our  Mr.  Mellish  reports  that  he  shaw  the  sipment — 
I  mean  saw  the  shipment — what's  the  matter  with 
me?  (this  girl  must  think  that  I'm  a  perfect  fool) 
.  .  .  that  he  shaw  the  sipment  in  question  on  the 
platform  of  the  station  at  Miller's  Falls,  and  that  it 
— er  ...  ah  ...  ooom  .  .  .  (I'll  have  this  girl 
asleep  in  her  chair  in  a  minute.  I'll  bet  that  she  goes 
and  tells  the  other  girls  that  she  has  just  taken  a 
[93] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

letter  from  a  man  with  the  mind  of  an  eight-year-old 
boy).  .  .  .  We  could,  therefore,  comma,  .  .  .  what's 
the  matter?  ...  Oh,  I  didn't  finish  that  other  sen- 
tence, I  guess.  .  .  .  Let's  see,  how  did  it  go?  ... 
Oh,  yes  .  .  .  and  that  I,  or  rather  it,  was  in  good 
shape  .  .  .  er,  cross  that  out,  please  (this  girl  is 
simply  wasting  her  time  here.  I  could  spell  this 
out  with  alphabet  blocks  quicker  and  let  her  copy 
it)  ...  and  that  it  was  in  excellent  shape  at  that 
shape — er  ...  or  rather,  at  that  time  ...  er  ... 
period.  New  paragraph. 

"  We  are,  comma,  therefore,  comma,  unable  to 
.  .  .  hello,  Mr.  Watterly,  be  right  with  you  in  half 
a  second.  ...  I'll  finish  this  later,  Miss  Kettle  .  .  . 
thank  you." 

When  the  mail  is  disposed  of  we  have  what  is 
known  as  Memorandum  Hour.  During  this  period 
every  one  sends  memoranda  to  every  one  else.  If 
you  happen  to  have  nothing  in  particular  about 
which  to  dictate  a  memorandum,  you  dictate  a  memo- 
randum to  some  one,  saying  that  you  have  nothing 
to  suggest  or  report.  This  gives  a  stimulating  ex- 
change of  ideas,  and  also  helps  to  use  up  the  blue 
memorandum  blanks  which  have  been  printed  at 
some  expense  for  just  that  purpose. 

As  an  example  of  how  this  system  works,  I  will 
give  a  typical  instance  of  its  procedure.  My  part- 
[94] 


FROM  NINE  TO  FIVE 

ner,  let  us  say,  comes  in  and  sits  down  at  the  desk 
opposite  me.  I  observe  that  his  scarfpin  is  working 
its  way  out  from  his  tie.  I  call  a  stenographer  and 
say:  "  Take  a  memo  to  Mr.  MacFurdle,  please.  In 
re  Loosened  Scarfpin.  You  are  losing  your  scarf- 
pin." 

As  soon  as  she  has  typed  this  it  is  given  to  Mr. 
MacFurdle's  secretary,  and  a  carbon  copy  is  put 
in  the  files.  Mr.  MacFurdle,  on  receiving  my 
memo,  adjusts  his  scarfpin  and  calls  his  secretary. 

"  A  memo  to  Mr.  Benchley,  please.  In  re  Tight- 
ened Scarfpin.  Thank  you.  I  have  given  the  mat- 
ter my  attention." 

As  soon  as  I  have  received  a  copy  of  this  type- 
written reply  to  my  memorandum  we  nod  pleas- 
antly to  each  other  and  go  on  with  our  work.  In 
all,  not  more  than  half  an  hour  has  been  consumed, 
and  we  have  a  complete  record  of  the  negotiations 
in  our  files  in  case  any  question  should  ever  arise 
concerning  them.  In  case  no  question  should  ever 
arise,  we  still  have  the  complete  record.  So  we 
can't  lose — unless  you  want  to  call  that  half  hour 
a  loss. 

It  is  then  almost  lunch  time.    A  quick  glance 

at  a  pile  of  carbons  of  mill  reports  which  have  but 

little  significance  to  me  owing  to  the  fact  that  the 

figures  are  illegible  (it  being  a  fifth-string  carbon) ; 

[951 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

a  rapid  survey  of  the  matter  submitted  for  my  O.  K., 
most  of  which  I  dislike  to  take  the  responsibility 
for  and  therefore  pass  on  to  Mr.  Houghtelling  for  his 
O.  K.;  a  short  tussle  in  the  washroom  with  the  liquid- 
soap  container  which  contains  no  liquid  soap  and 
a  thorough  drying  of  the  hands  on  my  handkerchief, 
the  paper  towels  having  given  out  early  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  I  am  ready  to  go  to  lunch  with  a  man  from 
the  Eureka  Novelty  Company  who  wants  to  sell  us 
a  central  paste-supply  system  (whereby  all  the  office 
paste  is  kept  in  one  large  vat  in  the  storeroom,  in- 
dividual brushfuls  being  taken  out  only  on  requisi- 
tions O.  K.'d  by  the  head  of  the  department) . 

Both  being  practical  business  men,  we  spend  only 
two  hours  at  lunch.  And,  both  being  practical  busi- 
ness men,  we  know  all  the  subtleties  of  selling.  It 
is  a  well-known  fact  that  personality  plays  a  big 
role  in  the  so-called  "  selling  game  "  (one  of  a  series 
of  American  games,  among  which  are  "  the  news- 
paper game,"  "  the  advertising  game,"  "  the  cloak- 
and-suit  game,"  "  the  ladies'  mackintosh  and  over- 
shoe game,"  "the  seedless-raisin  and  dried-fruit 
game,"  etc.),  and  so  Mr.  Ganz  of  the  Eureka  Nov- 
elty Company  spends  the  first  hour  and  three-quar- 
ters developing  his  "personality  appeal."  All 
through  the  tomato  bisque  aux  croutons  and  the 
roast  prime  ribs  of  beef,  dish  gravy,  he  puts  into 
[96] 


FROM  NINE  TO  FIVE 

practice  the  principles  enunciated  in  books  on  Sell- 
ing, by  means  of  which  the  subject  at  hand  is  de- 
ferred in  a  subtle  manner  until  the  salesman  has 
had  a  chance  to  impress  his  prospect  with  his  geni- 
ality and  his  smile  (an  attractive  smile  has  been 
known  to  sell  a  carload  of  1897  style  derbies,  ac- 
cording to  authorities  on  The  Smile  in  Selling),  his 
knowledge  of  baseball,  his  rich  fund  of  stories,  and 
his  general  aversion  to  getting  down  to  the  dis- 
agreeable reason  for  his  call. 

The  only  trouble  with  this  system  is  that  I  have 
done  the  same  thing  myself  so  many  times  that  I 
know  just  what  his  next  line  is  going  to  be,  and 
can  figure  out  pretty  accurately  at  each  stage  of 
his  conversation  just  when  he  is  going  to  shift 
to  one  position  nearer  the  thing  he  has  to  sell.  I 
know  that  he  has  not  the  slightest  interest  in  my 
entertainment  other  than  the  sale  of  a  Eureka  Cen- 
tral Paste  Supply  System,  and  he  knows  that  I 
know  it,  and  so  we  spend  an  hour  and  three-quarters 
fooling  the  waiter  into  thinking  that  we  are  en- 
gaged in  disinterested  camaraderie. 

For  fifteen  minutes  we  talk  business,  and  I  agree 
to  take  the  matter  up  with  the  directors  at  the  next 
meeting,  holding  the  mental  reservation  that  a  cen- 
tral paste  supply  system  will  be  installed  in  our  plant 
only  over  my  dead  body. 

[971 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

This  takes  us  until  two-thirty,  and  I  have  to  hurry 
back  to  a  conference.  We  have  two  kinds  of  "  con- 
ference." One  is  that  to  which  the  office  boy  refers 
when  he  tells  the  applicant  for  a  job  that  Mr. 
Blevitch  is  "  in  conference."  This  means  that  Mr. 
Blevitch  is  in  good  health  and  reading  the  paper, 
but  otherwise  unoccupied.  The  other  kind  of  "  con- 
ference "  is  bona  fide  in  so  far  as  it  implies  that 
three  or  four  men  are  talking  together  in  one  room, 
and  don't  want  to  be  disturbed. 

This  conference  is  on,  let  us  say,  the  subject  of 
Window  Cards  for  display  advertising:  shall  they  be 
triangular  or  diamond-shaped? 

There  are  four  of  us  present,  and  we  all  begin 
by  biting  off  the  ends  of  four  cigars.  Watterly 
has  a  pile  of  samples  of  window  cards  of  various 
shapes,  which  he  hangs,  with  a  great  deal  of  trou- 
ble, on  the  wall,  and  which  are  not  referred  to  again. 
He  also  has  a  few  ideas  on  Window  Card  Psy- 
chology. 

"  It  seems  to  me,"  he  leads  off,  "  that  we  have  here 
a  very  important  question.  On  it  may  depend  the 
success  of  our  Middle  Western  sales.  The  problem 
as  I  see  it  is  this:  what  will  be  the  reaction  on  the 
retina  of  the  eye  of  a  prospective  customer  made 
by  the  sight  of  a  diamond-shaped  card  hanging  in 
a  window?  It  is  a  well-known  fact  in  applied  psy- 
[98] 


FROM  NINE  TO  FIVE 

chology  that  when  you  take  the  average  man  into 
a  darkened  room,  loosen  his  collar,  and  shout  "Dia- 
monds! "  at  him  suddenly,  his  mental  reaction  is  one 
in  which  the  ideas  of  Wealth,  Value,  Richness,  etc., 


"  The  problem  as  I  see  it  is  this." 

predominate.  Now,  it  stands  to  reason  that  the 
visual  reaction  from  seeing  a  diamond-shaped  card 
in  the  window  will  .  .  ." 

"  Excuse  me  a  moment,  George,"  says  MacFurdle, 
who  has  absorbed  some  pointers  on  Distribution 
from  a  book  entitled  "The  World  Salesman,"  "I 
don't  think  that  it  is  so  important  to  get  after  the 
psychology  of  the  thing  first  as  it  is  to  outline  thor- 
oughly the  Theory  of  Zone  Apportionment  on  which 
we  are  going  to  work.  If  we  could  make  up  a  chart, 
[991 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

showing  in  red  ink  the  types  of  retail-stores  and  in 
green  ink  the  types  of  jobber  establishments,  in  this 
district,  then  we  could  get  at  the  window  display 
from  that  angle  and  tackle  the  psychology  later,  if 
at  all.  Now,  on  such  a  chart  I  would  try  to  show 
the  zones  of  Purchasing  Power,  and  from  these  could 
be  deduced  .  .  ." 

"  Just  a  minute,  Harry,"  Inglesby  interrupts,  "  let 
me  butt  in  for  half  a  second.  That  chart  system 
is  all  very  well  when  you  are  selling  goods  with  which 
the  public  is  already  familiar  through  association 
with  other  brands,  but  with  ours  it  is  different.  We 
have  got  to  estimate  the  Consumer  Demand  first  in 
terms  of  dollar-and-a-quarter  units,  and  build  our 
selling  organization  up  around  that.  Now,  if  I  know 
anything  about  human  nature  at  all — and  I  think 
I  do,  after  being  in  the  malleable-iron  game  for  fif- 
teen years — the  people  in  this  section  of  the  coun- 
try represent  an  entirely  different  trade  current 
than  .  .  ." 

At  this  point  I  offer  a  few  remarks  on  one  of 
my  pet  hobbies,  the  influence  of  the  Gulf  Stream  on 
Regional  Commerce,  and  then  we  all  say  again  the 
same  things  that  we  said  before,  after  which  we 
say  them  again,  the  pitch  of  the  conversation  grow- 
ing higher  at  each  repetition  of  views  and  the  room 
becoming  more  and  more  filled  with  cigar  smoke. 
[100] 


FROM  NINE  TO  FIVE 

Our  final  decision  is  to  have  a  conference  to-morrow 
afternoon,  before  which  each  one  is  to  "  think  the 
matter  over  and  report  his  reactions." 

This  brings  the  day  to  a  close.  There  has  been 
nothing  remarkable  in  it,  as  the  reader  will  be  the 
first  one  to  admit.  And  yet  it  shows  the  secret  of 
whatever  we  bnve  not  accomplished  in  the  past  year 
in  our  business. 

And  it  also  shows  why  we  practical  business  men 
have  so  little  sympathy  with  a  visionary,  impracti- 
cal arrangement  like  this  League  of  Nations.  Presi- 
dent Wilson  was  all  right  in  his  way,  but  he  was  too 
academic.  What  we  practical  men  in  America  want 
is  deeds,  not  words. 


%*   LIBRARY  OF 
WAI*  DISNEY  £: 


[101] 


X 

TURNING  OVER  A  NEW  LEDGER  LEAF 

NEW  YEAR'S  morning  approximately  ninety- 
two  million  people  in  these  United  States  will 
make  another  stab  at  keeping  personal  and  house- 
hold accounts  for  the  coming  year. 

One  month  from  New  Year's  there  will  be  approxi- 
mately seventy-three  of  these  accountants  still  in 
the  race  (all  started).  Of  these,  sixty  will  be  groggy 
but  still  game  and  willing  to  lump  the  difference  be- 
tween the  actual  balance  in  their  pockets  and  the 
theoretical  balance  in  the  books  under  the  elastic 
heading  "  General  Expenses  "  or  "  Incidentals,"  and 
start  again  for  February.  The  remaining  thirteen, 
who  came  out  even,  will  be  either  professors  of  ac- 
counting in  business  schools  or  out  and  out  unre- 
liable. 

This  high  mortality  rate  among  amateur  account- 
ants is  one  of  the  big  problems  of  modern  house- 
hold efficiency,  and  is  exceeded  in  magnitude  only 
by  the  number  of  schemes  devised  to  simplify  house- 
hold accounting.  Every  domestic  magazine,  in  the 
midst  of  its  autobiographical  accounts  of  unhappy 

[102] 


TURNING  OVER  A  NEW  LEAF 
marriages,  must  needs  run  a  chart  showing  how  far 
a  family  with  an  income  of  $1,500  a  year  can  go 
without  getting  caught  and  still  put  something  aside 
for  a  canary.  Every  insurance  company  has  had 
prepared  by  experts  a  table  of  figures  explaining 
how,  by  lumping  everything  except  Rent  and  In- 
cidentals under  Luxuries  and  doing  without  them, 
you  can  save  enough  from  the  wreckage  of  $1,200 
a  year  to  get  in  on  their  special  Forty-Year  Adjourn- 
ment Policy. 

Those  publications  which  cannot  get  an  expert 
to  figure  out  how  much  you  ought  to  spend  per 
egg  per  hen-day  will  publish  letters  from  young 
housewives  showing  how  they  made  out  a  budget 
which  in  the  end  brought  them  in  more  money  than 
they  earned  and  had  the  grocer  and  electric  light 
company  owing  them  money. 

The  trouble  with  all  these  vicarious  budgets  is 
that  they  presuppose,  on  the  part  of  the  user,  an 
ability  to  add  and  subtract.  They  take  it  for 
granted  that  you  are  going  to  do  the  thing  right. 
Now,  with  all  due  respect  to  our  primary  and  sec- 
ondary school  system,  this  is  absurd.  Here  and 
there  you  may  find  some  one  who  can  take  a  page 
of  figures  and  maul  them  over  so  that  they  will 
corne  out  right  at  the  bottom,  but  who  wants  to  be 
a  man  like  that?  What  fun  does  he  get  out  of 
[103] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

life,  always  sure  of  what  the  result  is  going  to 
be? 

As  for  me,  give  me  the  regular  method  of  addi- 
tion by  logic ;  that  is,  if  the  result  obtained  is  twelve 
removed  from  the  result  that  should  have  been  ob- 
tained, then,  ergo,  twelve  is  the  amount  by  which 
you  have  miscalculated  and  it  should,  therefore,  be 
added  or  subtracted,  as  the  case  may  be,  to  or  from 
the  actual  result  somewhere  up  in  the  middle  of 
the  column,  so  that  in  the  end  the  thing  will  bal- 
ance. And  there  you  are,  with  just  the  same  result 
as  if  you  had  worked  for  hours  over  the  page  and 
quibbled  over  every  little  point  and  figure.  There  is 
no  sense  in  becoming  a  slave  to  numerical  signs 
which  in  themselves  are  not  worth  the  paper  they 
are  written  on.  It  is  the  imagination  that  one  puts 
into  accounting  that  makes  it  fascinating.  If  free 
verse,  why  not  free  arithmetic? 

It  is  for  the  honest  ones,  who  admit  that  they 
can't  work  one  of  the  budget  systems  for  the  men- 
tally alert,  that  the  accompanying  one  has  been 
devised. 

Let  us  take,  for  instance,  a  family  whose  income 
is  $750,000  a  year,  exclusive  of  tips.  In  the  fam- 
ily are  a  father,  mother  and  fox  terrier.  The  ex- 
penses for  such  a  family  come  under  the  head  of 
Liabilities  and  are  distributed  among  six  accounts: 
[104] 


TURNING  OVER  A  NEW  LEAF 

Food,  Lodging,  Extras,  Extras,  Incidentals  and  Ex- 
tras. For  this  couple  I  would  advise  the  follow- 
ing system: 

Take  the  contents  of  the  weekly  pay  envelope, 
$14,423.08  (if  any  one  is  mean  enough  to  go  and 
divide  $750,000  into  fifty-two  parts  to  see  if  I  have 
got  it  right,  he  will  find  that  it  doesn't  quite  come 
to  eight  cents,  but  you  certainly  wouldn't  have  me 
carry  it  out  to  any  more  places.  It  took  me  from 
three  yesterday  afternoon  until  after  dinner  to  do 
what  I  did).  Take  the  contents  of  the  envelope  and 
lay  them  on  the  kitchen  table  in  little  piles,  so 
much  for  meat,  so  much  for  eggs,  so  much  for  ad- 
hesive plaster,  etc.,  until  the  kitchen  table  is  cov- 
ered. Then  sweep  it  all  into  a  bag  and  balance 
your  books. 

Balancing  the  books  is  another  point  in  the  ideal 
system  which  often  makes  for  trouble.  Sticklers  for 
form  insist  that  the  two  sides  of  the  page  shall  come 
out  alike,  even  at  the  expense  of  your  self-respect. 
It  is  the  artificiality  of  this  that  hurts.  No  matter 
how  much  you  spend,  no  matter  how  much  you  re- 
ceive, at  the  bottom  of  the  page  they  must  add  up 
to  the  same  thing,  with  a  double  red  line  under- 
neath them  to  show  that  the  polls  are  closed. 

But  since  this  is  the  accepted  way  of  doing  the 
thing,  we  might  just  as  well  concede  the  point  and 
[105] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

lay  our  plans  accordingly.  First  take  the  sum  that 
you  have  left  over  in  the  household  exchequer  at 
the  end  of  the  mouth.  Put  it,  or  its  equivalent  in 
check  form,  on  the  table  in  front  of  you.  Then, 
working  backward,  find  out  how  much  you  have 
spent  since  the  first  of  the  month.  This  sum  is 
the  crux  of  the  whole  system.  Divide  it  into  as 
many  equal  parts  as  you  have  accounts.  For  in- 
stance, Food,  Rent,  Clothes,  Insurance  and  Savings, 
Operating  Expenses,  Higher  Life.  If  you  can't  di- 
vide it  so  that  it  comes  out  even,  tuck  a  little  bit 
on  the  Higher  Life  account.  And,  as  the  student  of 
French  says,  "  Voila  "  (there  it  is) ! 

Perhaps  you  have  wondered  what  I  meant  by 
"  Higher  Life."  I  have.  It  might  be  well  to  state 
it  here  so  that  we  can  all  get  it  clear  in  our  minds. 
Under  the  "  Higher  Life  "  account  you  can  charge 
everything  that  you  want  to  do,  but  feel  that  you 
can't  afford.  If  you  want  to  take  in  an  inconse- 
quential theatrical  performance  and  can't  quite 
square  it  with  your  conscience,  figure  it  out  this 
way:  By  going  to  that  show  you  will  become  so  dis- 
gusted with  the  futility  of  such  things  that  you  will 
come  out  of  the  theater  all  aglow  with  a  resolve  to 
do  a  man's  work  in  the  world  just  as  soon  as  you 
have  caught  up  with  your  sleep.  Surely  that  comes 
under  "  Advancement "  or  "  Higher  Life." 
[106] 


TURNING  OVER  A  NEW  LEAF 

Insurance  budget  helps  always  include  under 
"  Advancement  "  money  spent  for  lectures.  Now,  it 
may  be  that  I  have  drifted  away  from  the  big  things 
in  life  since  I  moved  out  into  the  country,  but  some- 
how I  can't  just  at  this  moment  recollect  standing 
in  line  at  a  box  office  for  a  lecture.  But  then,  my 
home  life  is  very  pleasant. 

Lectures  would  be  a  very  convenient  heading, 
nevertheless,  to  have  in  your  budget.  Then,  any 
little  items  that  slip  your  attention  during  the  month 
you  can  group  under  lectures  and  mark  off  ten  paces 
in  your  advancement  chart. 

By  way  of  outlining  beforehand  just  what  you 
can  spend  on  this  and  that  (and  it  is  usually  on 
"  that ")  it  might  be  well  to  take  another  family 
with  a  representative  income.  Let  us  say  that  there 
are  four  in  the  family  and  that  the  income  is  about 
$1,000  per  year  too  small.  If  such  a  family  would 
sit  down  some  evening  and  draw  a  chart  showing 
father's  earning  capacity  with  one  red  line  and 
the  family  spending  capacity  with  one  black  line, 
they  would  not  only  have  a  pleasant  evening,  but 
they  would  have  a  nice,  neat  chart  all  drawn  and 
suitable  for  framing. 

There  is  one  little  technical  point  that  the  ama- 
teur accountant  will  do  well  to  remember.  It  gives 
a  distinction  to  the  page  and  shows  that  you  are  ao 
[107] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

quainted  with  bookkeeping  lore,  it  is  this:  Label 
your  debit  column  "  credits  "  and  your  credit  col- 
umn "  debits."  You  might  think  that  what  you 
receive  into  the  exchequer  would  be  credited  and 


"  They  would  have  a  nice,  neat  chart  suitable  for  framing." 

your  expenses  debited,  but  that  is  where  you  miss 
the  whole  theory  of  practical  accounting.  That 
would  be  too  simple  to  be  efficient.  You  must  wax 
transcendental,  and  say,  "  I,  as  an  individuated  en- 
tity, am  nothing.  Everything  is  all;  all  is  every- 
thing." There  is  a  transcendent  Account,  to  which 
all  other  accounts  are  responsible,  and  hence  money 
turned  over  to  the  Cinnamon  Account  is  not  cred- 
ited to  that  account,  but  rather  debited  to  it,  for 
Cinnamon  hereby  assumes  the  responsibility  for  the 
[108] 


TURNING  OVER  A  NEW  LEAF 

sum.  As  money  is  spent  for  Cinnamon,  its  account 
is  credited,  for  it  is  relieved  of  that  responsibility. 
Don't  start  wondering  where  the  responsibility 
finally  settles  or  you  will  throw  something  out  of 
its  stride  in  your  brain. 

Some  people  profess  to  scoff  at  the  introduction 
of  bookkeeping  into  the  running  of  the  household. 
It  is  simply  because  they  never  tasted  the  fascina- 
tion of  the  thing. 

The  advantage  of  keeping  family  accounts  is 
clear.  If  you  do  not  keep  them  you  are  uneasily 
aware  of  the  fact  that  you  are  spending  more  than 
you  are  earning.  If  you  do  keep  them,  you  know 
it. 


[109] 


XI 

A  PIECE  OF  ROAST  BEEF 

PERSONALLY,  I  class  roast  beef  with  water- 
cress and  vanilla  cornstarch  pudding  as  tasty 
articles  of  diet.  It  undoubtedly  has  more  than  the 
required  number  of  calories;  it  leans  over  backward 
in  its  eagerness  to  stand  high  among  our  best  pro- 
teins, and,  according  to  a  vivid  chart  in  the  back 
of  the  cookbook,  it  is  equal  in  food  value  to  three 
dried  raisins  piled  one  on  the  other  plus  peanut- 
butter  the  size  of  an  egg. 

But  for  all  that  I  can't  seem  to  feel  that  I  am 
having  a  good  time  while  I  am  eating  it.  It  stimu- 
lates the  same  nerve  centers  in  me  that  a  lantern- 
slide  lecture  on  "  Palestine— the  Old  and  the  New," 
does. 

However,  I  have  noticed  that  there  are  people 
who  are  not  bored  by  it;  in  fact,  I  have  seen  them 
deliberately  order  it  in  a  restaurant  when  they  had 
the  choice  of  something  else;  so  I  thought  that  the 
only  fair  thing  I  could  do  would  be  to  look  into  the 
matter  and  see  if,  in  this  great  city,  there  weren't 
[no] 


A  PIECE  OF  ROAST  BEEF 

some  different  ways  of  serving  roast  beef  to  vary 
its  monotony. 

Roast  beef  is  not  the  same  price  in  all  eating- 
places.  What  makes  the  difference?  What  does 
a  diner  at  the  Ritz  get  in  his  "  roast  prime  ribs  of 
beef  au  jus "  that  makes  it  distinctive  from  the 
"  Special  to-day — roast  beef  and  mashed  potatoes  " 
of  the  Bowery  restaurant? 

To  answer  these  questions  I  started  out  on  a  tour 
of  the  representative  eating-places  of  some  of  our 
best  known  strata  of  society,  and,  whatever  my  con- 
clusions are,  you  may  be  sure  that  they  are  thor- 
oughly inexpert. 

First,  I  tried  out  what  is  known  as  the  Bay  State 
Lunch,  so  called  because  on  Thursdays  they  have 
a  fishcake  special.  It  is  one  of  the  hundreds  of 
"  self-serving  "  lunchrooms,  where  you  approach  the 
marble  counter  and  give  your  order  in  a  low  tone 
to  a  man  in  a  barber's  coat,  and  then  repeat  it  at 
intervals  of  one  minute,  each  time  louder  and  each 
time  to  a  different  man,  until  you  are  forced  to  point 
to  a  tub  of  salmon  salad  and  say,  "  Some  of  that," 
for  which  your  ticket  is  punched  and  you  are  al- 
lowed to  take  your  portion  and  nurse  it  on  the  over- 
developed arm  of  a  chair. 

Here  the  roast  beef  shot  through  the  Punch  and 
Judy  arrangement  in  the  wall,  a  piece  of  meat  about 
[in] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

as  large  around  as  a  man's-size  mitten,  steeping  in  its 
own  gravy  and  of  a  pale  reddish  hue.  The  price  was 
twenty  cents,  which  included  a  dab  of  mashed  potato 
dished  out  in  an  ice-cream  scoop,  a  generous  allow- 
ance of  tender  peas,  two  hot  tea-biscuits  and  butter 
to  match. 


Considering  the  basic  ingredient  it  was  a  perfectly 
satisfactory  meal." 


Considering  the  basic  ingredient,  it  was  a  per- 
fectly satisfactory  meal,  and  I  felt  that  twenty 
cents  was  little  enough  to  pay  for  it,  especially  since 
it  was  going  in  on  my  expense  account. 

For  the  next  experiment  I  went  to  a  restaurant 
where  business  men  are  wont  to  gather  for  luncheon, 
men  who  pride  themselves  on  their  acumen  and  ad- 
herence to  the  principles  of  efficiency.  The  place 
[112] 


A  PIECE  OF  ROAST  BEEF 

has  a  French  name  and  its  menus  are  printed  on  a 
card  the  size  of  a  life  insurance  company's  com- 
plimentary calendar,  always  an  ominous  sign.  The 
roast  beef  here  was  served  cold,  with  a  plate  of 
escarole  salad  (when  I  was  a  boy  I  used  to  have 
to  dig  escarole  out  of  the  front  lawn  with  a  trowel 
so  that  the  grass  could  have  a  chance)  for  seventy- 
five  cents. 

The  meat  bulked  a  little  larger  than  at  the  Bay 
State  Lunch,  but  when  the  fat  had  been  cut  away 
and  trimmed  off  the  salvage  was  about  the  size  of  a 
boy's  mitten.  As  for  the  taste,  the  only  difference 
that  I  could  detect  was  that  one  had  been  hot  and 
the  other  cold. 

And,  incidentally,  the  waiter  had  some  bosom 
friends  in  the  next  room  who  fascinated  him  so  that 
it  was  all  I  could  do  to  make  him  see  that  if  he 
didn't  come  around  to  me  once  in  a  while,  just  as 
a  matter  of  form,  there  would  be  no  way  for  me  to 
tip  him.  Beef  and  salad,  plus  tip,  ninety  cents. 

That  evening  I  ambled  up  the  Bowery  until  I 
came  to  the  Busy  Home  Restaurant.  On  a  black- 
board in  front  was  written,  "  Roast  Beef,  Mashed 
Potatoes  and  Coffee,  10  Cents."  My  old  hunger 
again  seized  me.  I  said  to  myself:  "Look  here! 
Be  a  man!  This  thing  is  getting  the  best  of  you." 
But  before  I  knew  it  I  was  inside  and  seated  at 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

an  oilcloth-covered  table,  saying,  in  a  hoarse  voice, 
"Roast  beef!  " 

The  waiter  was  dressed  in  an  informal  costume, 
with  his  shirt-sleeves  rolled  up  and  a  mulatto  apron 
about  his  waist,  but  he  smiled  genially  when  he  took 
my  order  and  was  back  with  it  in  two  minutes.  The 
article  itself  was  of  the  regulation  size,  cut  some- 
what thinner,  perhaps,  and  bordering  on  the  gray 
in  hue,  but  undoubtedly  roast  beef.  It,  too,  had  an 
affinity  for  its  own  gravy  and  hid  itself  modestly 
under  an  avalanche  of  mashed  potatoes.  A  cup  of 
coffee  was  also  included  in  the  ten  cents'  initial  CK- 
pense,  but  I  somehow  wasn't  coffee-thirsty  that  night, 
and  so  didn't  sample  it.  But  I  did  help  myself  to 
the  plate  piled  high  with  fresh  bread  which  was 
left  in  front  of  me.  All  in  all,  it  was  what  I  should 
call  a  representative  roast  beef  dinner.  And  I  got 
more  than  ten  cents'  worth  of  calories,  I  know. 

But  so  far  I  had  kept  below  the  Fourteenth  Street 
belt  in  my  investigations.  Roast  beef  is  a  cosmo- 
politan habit,  and  knows  no  arbitrary  boundaries; 
so  I  went  uptown.  Into  one  of  the  larger  of  our 
largest  hotels,  one  which  is  not  so  near  the  Grand 
Central  Station  as  to  be  in  the  train-shed,  and  yet 
not  so  far  removed  from  it  as  to  be  represented  by 
a  different  Assemblyman.  Here,  I  felt,  would  be 
the  test.  Could  roast  beef  come  back?  Surrounded 


A  PIECE  OF  ROAST  BEEF 

by  glittering  chandeliers  and  rich  tapestries,  snowy 
table  linen  and  silver  service,  here  was  the  chance 
for  the  ordinary  roast  beef  to  become  a  veritable 
dainty,  with  some  character,  some  distinctive  touch 
that  should  lift  it  above  all  that  roast  beef  has  ever 
meant  before.  I  entered  the  dining-room,  in  high 
hopes. 

Clad  in  a  walking  suit  of  virile  tweed,  I  consid- 
ered myself  respectably  dressed.  Not  ostentatiously 
respectable,  mind  you,  but,  since  most  of  the  other 
diners  were  in  evening  dress,  rather  distingui,  I 
thought. 

But  apparently  the  hotel  retainers  weren't  trained 
to  look  through  a  rough  exterior  and  find  the  ster- 
ling qualities  beneath.  They  looked  through  my 
rough  exterior  all  right,  but  they  didn't  stop  at 
my  sterling  qualities.  They  looked  right  through 
to  the  man  behind  me,  and  gave  him  the  signal 
that  there  was  a  seat  for  him. 

Not  to  be  outdone,  however,  I  got  my  place  in 
the  sun  by  cleverly  tripping  my  rival  as  he  passed 
me,  so  that  he  fell  into  the  fountain  arrangement, 
while  I  sat  down  in  the  seat  pulled  out  for  him  by 
the  head  waiter.  And,  once  I  was  in,  there  was 
nothing  for  them  to  do  but  let  me  stay. 

After  I  had  been  there  a  few  minutes  a  waiter 
came  and  put  on  a  fresh  table  cloth.  Five  minutes 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

later  another  man  placed  a  knife  and  spoon  at  my 
plate.  Later  in  the  evening  a  boy  with  a  basket 
of  rolls  wandered  by  and  deposited  one  on  my  ta- 
ble with  a  pair  of  pincers.  Personally,  I  was  rather 
glad  that  it  was  working  out  this  way,  for  it  would 
make  my  story  all  the  better,  but  I  might  have  really 
been  in  a  hurry  for  my  dinner. 

It  wasn't  long,  as  the  crow  flies,  before  one  of 
the  third  assistant  waiters  unloosened  enough  to  drop 
round  and  see  if  there  was  anything  else  I  wanted 
besides  one  roll  and  a  knife  and  spoon.  I  looked 
over  the  menu  as  if  I  were  in  a  pretty  captious  mood, 
and  then,  with  the  air  of  an  epicure  who  has  tasted 
to  the  dregs  all  the  condiments  of  Arabia  and  whose 
jaded  palate  refuses  to  thrill  any  longer,  I  ordered 
"  roast  beef." 

It  was  billed  as  "90  (.80),"  which  didn't  strike 
me  as  being  very  steep,  considering  the  overhead 
expense  there  must  be  in  keeping  little  knots  of 
waiters  and  'bus-boys  standing  round  doing  noth- 
ing in  the  further  corner  of  the  room. 

The  waiter  wasn't  very  enthusiastic  over  my  or- 
der, and  something  saved  me  from  asking  him  if 
they  threw  in  "a  side"  of  mashed  potatoes  with 
the  meat.  He  seemed  to  expect  something  more, 
even  after  I  had  ordered  potatoes,  so  I  suggested 
an  artichoke.  That  cheered  him  up  more  than  any- 
[116] 


A  PIECE  OF  ROAST  BEEF 


*The  waiter  wasn't  very  enthusiastic  over  my  order.1 


OF  ALL  THINGS,! 

thing  I  had  done  that  evening,  and  he  really  got 
quite  f ratty  and  said:  "  A  little  salad,  sir?  "  Again 
I  imitated  a  man  who  has  had  more  experience  with 
salads  than  any  other  three  men  put  together  and 
who  has  found  them  a  miserable  sham. 

"  No;  that  will  be  all  for  now,"  I  said,  and  turned 
wearily  away.  I  wanted  to  tell  him  that  I  had  a 
dinner  coat  at  home  that  looked  enough  sight  bet- 
ter than  his,  but  there  is  no  use  in  making  a  scene 
when  it  can  be  avoided. 

During  the  next  twenty  minutes  the  orchestra 
played  once  and  I  ate  my  roll.  Then  the  roast 
beef  came. 

On  a  silver  platter,  with  a  silver  cover,  it  was 
placed  before  me  under  the  best  possible  scenic 
conditions.  But  the  thing  that  met  my  gaze  when 
the  cover  was  lifted  might  just  as  well  have  been 
the  same  property  piece  of  roast  beef  that  was 
keeping  company  with  a  dab  of  mashed  potato  in 
the  Bay  State  Lunch.  It  had  a  trifle  more  fat,  was 
just  a  shade  pinker,  and  perhaps  a  micrometer  could 
have  detected  a  bit  more  bulk;  but,  so  far  as  I  was 
concerned  or  so  far  as  the  calories  were  concerned, 
it  was  the  same.  I  won't  say  that  it  was  the  same 
as  the  Roast  Beef  Special  of  the  Bowery  Restaurant, 
because  the  service  in  the  Bowery  Restaurant  was 
infinitely  better. 

[118] 


A  PIECE  OF  ROAST  BEEF 

As  a  fitting  garniture  to  such  a  dish,  there  was  a 
corsage  of  watercress  draped  on  the  corner  of  the 
salver.  At  any  rate,  it  could  be  said  for  it  that 
it  was  not  intoxicating,  and  so  could  never  cause 
any  real  misery  in  this  world. 

I  nibbled  at  my  roast  beef,  but  my  spirit  was 
broken.  I  had  gone  through  a  week  of  self-denial, 
ordering  roast  beef  when  I  craved  edibles,  eating 
at  restaurants  while  my  family  waited  for  me  at 
home,  and  here  was  the  result  of  my  researches: 
Roast  beef  is  roast  beef,  and  nothing  can  prevent 
it.  From  the  ten-cent  order  of  the  Busy  Home  Res- 
taurant, up  through  to  the  piece  I  was  then  eating, 
it  was  the  same  grim  reality,  the  only  justification 
for  a  difference  in  price  being  a  silver  salver  or  a 
waiter  in  a  tuxedo. 

"  But,"  I  said  to  myself,  "  eighty  cents  isn't  so 
much,  at  that.  Besides,  I  have  heard  the  orchestra 
play  one  tune  every  half-hour,  and  have  had  a  kind 
word  from  one  of  the  charges  d'affaires  of  the  wait- 
er's staff." 

This  quite  reconciled  me,  until  my  check  was 
brought.  There,  added  to  the  initial  expense  of 
eighty  cents,  was  the  upkeep,  such  as  "  Cover,  250."" 
"  Potatoes,  3oc."  And  to  this  must  be  added  the 
modest  fee  of  twenty  cents  to  the  waiter  and  ten 
cents  to  the  hat-boy  who  gave  me  the  wrong  hat. 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

Total  expense  for  one  piece  of  roast  beef,  $1.70. 
These  investigations  may  not  prove  to  be  much 
of  a  contribution  to  modern  science  or  economics. 
I  doubt  if  they  are  ever  incorporated  in  any  text- 
book, even  if  it  should  be  a  textbook  on  this  very 
subject.  But  I  must  take  credit  to  myself  for  one 
thing:  Not  once  throughout  the  whole  report  have 
I  alluded  to  the  Tenderloin  District. 


[120] 


XII 

JHE  COMMUNITY  MASQUE  AS  A 
SUBSTITUTE  FOR  WAR 

WITH  War  and  Licker  removed  from  the  list 
of  "  What's  Going  on  This  Week,"  how  will 
mankind  spend  the  long  summer  evenings?  Some 
advocate  another  war.  Others  recommend  a  piece 
of  yeast  in  a  glass  of  grape-juice.  The  effect  is  said 
to  be  equally  devastating. 

But  there  is  a  new  school,  led  by  Percy  Mackaye, 
which  brings  forward  a  scheme  for  occupying  the 
spare  time  of  the  world  which  has,  at  least,  the 
savor  of  novelty.  It  presents  the  community 
masque  as  a  substitute  for  war.  Whenever  a  neigh- 
borhood, or  county,  feels  the  old  craving  for  blood- 
letting and  gas-bombing  coming  on,  a  town  meeting 
is  to  be  called  and  plans  drawn  up  for  the  presen- 
tation of  a  masque  entitled  "  Democracy  "  or  "  From 
Chrysalis  to  Butterfly."  In  this  simple  way,  one 
and  all  will  be  kept  out  in  the  open  air  and  will 
get  to  know  each  other  better,  thus  relieving  their 
bellicose  cravings  right  there  on  the  village  green 
among  themselves,  without  dragging  a  foreign  na- 

[121] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

tion  into  the  mess  at  all.  The  slogan  is  "Fight 
Your  Neighbors  First.  Why  Go  Abroad  for  War?  " 
The  community  masque  idea  is  all  right  in  itself. 
There  certainly  can  be  no  harm  in  dressing  up  to 
repiesent  the  Three  Platoon  System,  or  the  Spirit 
of  Machinery,  and  reciting  free  verse  to  the  effect 
that: 

"  I  am  the  Three  Platoon  System.    Firemen  I  rep- 
resent, 

And  the  clash  and  clang  of  the  Hook  and  Ladder 
Company." 

No  one  could  find  fault  with  that,  provided  that 
those  taking  part  in  the  thing  do  so  of  their  own 
free  will  and  understand  what  they  are  doing. 

The  trouble  with  the  community  masque  is  not 
so  much  with  the  masque  as  with  the  community. 
For  while  the  masque  may  be  a  five  star  sporting 
extra  hot  from  the  presses  of  Percy  Mackaye,  the 
community  is  the  same  old  community  that  has 
been  getting  together  for  inter-Sunday  School  track- 
meets  and  Wig  and  Footlight  Club  Amateur  The- 
atricals for  years  and  years,  and  the  result  has  al- 
ways been  the  same. 

Let  us  say,  for  instance,  that  the  community  of 
Wimblehurst  begins  to  feel  the  lack  of  a  good,  rous- 
[122] 


A  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  WAR 

ing  war  to  keep  the  Ladies'  Guild  and  the  men  over 
thirty-five  busy.  What  could  be  more  natural  than 
to  call  in  Mr.  Mackaye,  and  say:  "  What  have  you 
got  in  the  way  of  a  nice  masque  for  a  suburban  dis- 
trict containing  many  socially  possible  people 
and  others  who  might  do  very  well  in  ensemble 
work?  " 

Something  entitled  "  The  March  of  Civilization  " 
is  selected,  because  it  calls  for  Boy  Scout  uniforms 
and  a  Goddess  of  Liberty  costume,  all  of  which  are 
on  hand,  together  with  lots  of  Red  Cross  regalia, 
left  over  from  the  war  drives.  The  plot  of  the  thing 
concerns  the  adventures  of  the  young  girl  Civiliza- 
tion who  leaves  her  home  in  the  Neolithic  Period 
accompanied  only  by  her  faithful  old  nurse  Lan- 
guage and  Language's  little  children  the  Vowels  and 
the  Consonants.  She  is  followed  all  the  way  from 
the  Neolithic  Age  to  the  Present  Time  by  the  evil 
spirit,  Indigestion,  but,  thanks  to  the  helpful  offices 
of  the  Spirits  of  Capillary  Attraction,  and  Inde- 
structibility of  Matter,  she  overcomes  all  obstacles 
and  reaches  her  goal,  The  League  of  Nations,  at 
last. 

But  during  the  course  of  her  wanderings,  there 

have  been  all  kinds  of  sub-plots  which  bring  the 

element  of  suspense  into  the  thing.    For  instance, 

it  seems  that  this  person  Indigestion  has  found  out 

[123] 


OF  ALL  THINGS  I 

something  about  Civilization's  father  which  gives 
him  the  upper  hand  over  the  girl,  and  he,  together 
with  the  two  gunmen,  Heat  and  Humidity,  arrange 
all  kinds  of  traps  for  the  poor  thing  to  fall  into. 
But  she  takes  counsel  with  the  kind  old  lady,  Self- 
Determination  of  Peoples,  and  is  considerably 
helped  by  the  low  comedy  character,  Obesity,  who 
always  appears  at  just  the  right  moment.  So  in  the 
end,  there  is  a  big  ensemble,  involving  Boy  Scouts, 
representatives  of  those  Allies  who  happen  to  be  in 
good  standing  in  that  particular  month,  seven  boys 
and  girls  personifying  the  twelve  months  of  the  year, 
Red  Cross  workers,  the  Mayor's  Committee  of  Wel- 
come, a  selection  of  Major  Prophets,  children  typi- 
fying the  ten  different  ways  of  cooking  an  egg,  and 
the  all-pervading  Spirit  of  the  Post-Office  Depart- 
ment, seated  on  a  dai's  in  the  rear  and  watching  over 
the  assemblage  with  kindly  eyes  and  an  armful  of 
bricks. 

This,  then,  is  in  brief  outline,  "The  March  of 
Civilization,"  selected  for  presentation  by  the  Com- 
munity Council  of  Wimblehurst.  It  is  to  be  done 
on  the  edge  of  the  woods  which  line  the  golf- 
course,  and  on  paper,  the  thing  shapes  up  rather 
well. 

Considerable  hard  feeling  arises,  however,  over 
the  choice  of  the  children  to  play  the  parts  of  the 
[124] 


A  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  WAR 

Vowels  and  the  Consonants.  It  is;  of  course,  not 
possible  to  have  all  the  vowels  and  consonants  rep- 
resented, as  they  would  clutter  up  the  stage  and 
might  prove  unwieldy  in  the  allegretto  passages. 
A  compromise  is  therefore  effected  by  personifying 
only  the  more  graceful  ones,  like  5  and  the  lower- 
case /,  and  this  means  that  a  certain  discrimination 
must  be  used  in  selecting  the  actors.  It  also  means 
that  a  great  many  little  girls  are  going  to  be  disap- 
pointed and  their  mothers'  feelings  outraged. 

Little  Alice  Withstanley  is  chosen  to  play  the  part 
of  the  Craft  Guild  Movement  in  Industry,  showing 
the  rise  of  cooperation  and  unity  among  the  work- 
ing-classes. She  is  chosen  because  she  has  blonde 
hair  which  can  be  arranged  in  braids  down  her  back, 
obviously  essential  to  a  proper  representation  of  in- 
dustrial team-work  as  a  moving  force  in  the  world's 
progress.  It  so  happens,  however,  that  the  daughter 
of  the  man  who  is  cast  for  Humidity  has  had  her 
eyes  on  this  ingenue  part  ever  since  the  printed  text 
was  circulated  and  had  virtually  been  promised  it 
by  the  Head  of  the  House  Committee  of  the  Coun- 
try Club,  through  whose  kindness  the  grounds  were 
to  be  used  for  the  performance.  There  is  a  heated 
discussion  over  the  merits  of  the  two  contestants 
between  Mrs.  Withstanley  and  the  mother  of  the 
betrayed  girl,  which  results  in  the  withdrawal  of 
[125] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

the  latter's  offer  to  furnish  Turkish  rugs  for  the 
Oriental  Decadence  scene. 

Following  this,  the  rougher  element  of  the  com- 
munity— enlisted  to  take  part  in  the  scenes  showing 


'  There  is  a  heated  discussion  between  Mrs.  Withstanley  and  the 
mother  of  the  betrayed  girl." 

the  building  of  the  Pyramids  and  the  first  Battle  of 
Bull  Run — appear  at  one  of  the  early  rehearsals  in 
a  state  of  bolshevik  upheaval,  protesting  against 
the  unjust  ruling  which  makes  them  attend  all  re- 
hearsals and  wait  around  on  the  side  hill  until  their 
scenes  are  on,  keeping  them  inactive  sometimes 
from  two  to  three  hours,  according  to  the  finish  with 
which  the  principals  get  through  the  prologue  and 
opening  scenes  showing  the  Creation.  The  pro- 
(126] 


A  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  WAR 

letariat  present  an  ultimatum,  saying  that  the  Com- 
mittee in  charge  can  either  shorten  their  waiting 
hours  or  remove  the  restrictions  on  crap-shooting 
on  the  side-hill  during  their  periods  of  inaction. 

There  is  a  meeting  of  the  Director  and  his  assist- 
ants who  elect  a  delegation  to  confer  with  the  strik- 
ing legionaries,  with  the  result  that  no  compromise 
is  reached,  the  soviet  withdraws  from  the  masque 
in  a  body,  threatening  to  set  fire  to  the  grass  on 
the  first  night  of  the  performance. 

During  the  rehearsals  the  husband  of  the  woman 
who  is  portraying  Winter  Wheat  is  found  wandering 
along  the  brookside  with  her  sister  cereal  Spring 
Wheat,  which,  of  course,  makes  further  polite  co- 
operation between  these  two  staples  impossible,  and 
the  Dance  of  the  Food  Stuffs  has  to  be  abandoned 
at  the  last  moment.  This  adds  to  the  general  ten- 
sion. 

Three  nights  before  the  first  performance  the  Di- 
rector calls  every  one  to  a  meeting  in  the  trophy 
room  of  the  Club-house  and  says  that,  so  far  as  he 
is  concerned,  the  show  is  off.  He  has  given  up  his 
time  to  come  out  here,  night  after  night,  in  an  at- 
tempt to  put  on  a  masque  that  will  be  a  credit  to 
the  community  and  a  significant  event  in  the  world 
of  art,  and  what  has  he  found?  Indifference,  ir- 
responsibility, lack  of  cooperation,  non-attendance 
[127] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

at  rehearsals,  and  a  spirit  of  laissez-faire  in  the  face 
of  which  it  is  impossible  to  produce  a  successful 
masque.  Consideration  for  his  own  reputation,  as 
well  as  that  of  the  township,  makes  it  necessary 


:The  audience  is  composed  chiefly  of  the  aged  and 
the  infirm." 


for  him  to  throw  the  whole  thing  over,  here  and 
now. 

The  Chairman  of  the  Committee  then  gets  up  and 
cries  a  little,  and  says  that  he  is  sure  that  if  every 
one  agrees  to  pull  together  during  these  last  three 
days  and  to  attend  rehearsals  faithfully  and  to  try 
to  get  plenty  of  sleep,  Mr.  Parsleigh,  the  coach,  will 
consent  to  help  them  through  with  the  performance, 
and  he  asks  every  one  who  is  willing  to  cooperate 
to  say  "  Aye."  Every  one  says  "  Aye  "  and  Mr. 
Parsleigh  is  won  over. 

As  for  the  masque  itself,  it  is  given,  of  course; 
and  as  most  of  the  able-bodied  people  of  the  com- 
[128] 


A  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  WAR 

munity  are  taking  part,  the  audience  is  composed 
chiefly  of  the  aged  and  the  infirm,  who  catch  mus- 
cular rheumatism  from  sitting  out-of-doors  and  are 
greatly  bored,  except  during  those  scenes  when  their 
relatives  are  taking  part.  The  masque  is  hailed  as 
a  great  success,  however,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
the  community  has  been  disrupted  and  social  life 
made  impossible  until  the  next  generation  grows  up 
and  agrees  to  let  bygones  be  bygones. 

But  as  a  substitute  for  war,  it  has  no  equal. 


[129] 


XIII 
CALL  FOR  MR.  KENWORTHY! 

A  GREAT  many  people  have  wondered  to 
themselves,  in  print,  just  where  the  little 
black  laundry-studs  go  after  they  have  been 
yanked  from  the  shirt.  Others  pass  this  by  as  in- 
consequential, but  are  concerned  over  the  ultimate 
disposition  of  all  the  pencil  stubs  that  are  thrown 
away.  Such  futile  rumination  is  all  well  enough 
for  those  who  like  it.  As  for  me;  give  me  a  big, 
throbbing  question  like  this:  "Who  are  the  people 
that  one  hears  being  paged  in  hotels?  Are  they  real 
people  or  are  they  decoys?  And  if  they  are  real 
people,  what  are  they  being  paged  for?  " 

Now,  there's  something  vital  to  figure  out.  And 
the*  best  of  it  is  that  it  can  be  figured  out  by  the 
simple  process  of  following  the  page  to  see  whether 
he  ever  finds  any  one. 

In  order  that  no  expense  should  be  spared,  I 

picked  out  a  hotel  with  poor  service,  which  means 

that  it  was  an  expensive  hotel.    It  was  so  expensive 

that  all  you  could  hear  was  the  page's  voice  as  he 

[130] 


CALL  FOR  MR.  KENWORTHY! 

walked  by  you;  his  footfalls  made  no  noise  in  the 
extra  heavy  Bokhara.  It  was  just  a  mingling  of 
floating  voices,  calling  for  "  Mr.  Bla-bla,  Mr. 
Schwer-a-a,  Mr.  Twa-a-a." 

Out  of  this  wealth  of  experimental  material  I 
picked  a  boy  with  a  discouraged  voice  like  Wallace 
Eddinger's,  who  seemed  to  be  saying  "  I'm  calling 
these  names — because  that's  my  job — if  I  wasn't 
calling  these — I'd  be  calling  out  cash  totals  in  an 
honor  system  lunchery — but  if  any  one  should  ever 
answer  to  one  of  these  names — I'd  have  a  poor 
spell." 

Allowing  about  fifteen  feet  distance  between  us 
for  appearance's  sake,  I  followed  him  through  the 
lobby.  He  had  a  bunch  of  slips  in  his  hand  and 
from  these  he  read  the  names  of  the  pagees. 

"  Call  for  Mr.  Kenworthy — Mr.  Shriner — Mr. 
Bodkin — Mr.  Blevitch — Mr.  Kenworthy — Mr.  Bod- 
kin— Mr.  Kenworthy — Mr.  Shriner — call  for  Mr. 
Kenworthy — Mr.  Blevitch — Mr.  Kenworthy." 

Mr.  Kenworthy  seemed  to  be  standing  about  a 
20  per  cent  better  chance  of  being  located  than  any 
of  the  other  contestants.  Probably  the  boy  was  of 
a  romantic  temperament  and  liked  the  name.  Some- 
times that  was  the  only  name  he  would  call  for  mile 
upon  mile.  It  occurred  to  me  that  perhaps  Mr. 
Kenworthy  was  the  only  one  wanted,  and  that  the 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 


9  Sometimes  that  was  the  only  name  he  would  call  for  mile 
upon  mile." 

[132] 


CALL  FOR  MR.  KENWORTHY1 

other  names  were  just  put  in  to  make  it  harder,  or 
to  give  body  to  the  thing. 

But  when  we  entered  the  bar  the  youth  shifted 
his  attack.  The  name  of  Kenworthy  evidently  had 
begun  to  cloy.  He  was  fed  up  on  romance  and 
wanted  something  substantial,  homely,  perhaps,  but 
substantial. 

So  he  dropped  Kenworthy  and  called:  "Mr. 
Blevitch.  Call  for  Mr.  Blevitch— Mr.  Shriner— Mr. 
Bodkin — Mr.  Blevitch — " 

But  even  this  subtle  change  of  tactics  failed  to  net 
him  a  customer.  We  had  gone  through  the  main 
lobby,  along  the  narrow  passage  lined  with  young 
men  waiting  on  sofas  for  young  women  who  would 
be  forty  minutes  late,  through  the  grill,  and  now 
had  crossed  the  bar,  and  no  one  had  raised  even  an 
eyebrow.  No  wonder  the  boy's  voice  sounded  dis- 
couraged. 

As  we  went  through  one  of  the  lesser  dining- 
rooms,  the  dining-room  that  seats  a  lot  of  heavy  men 
in  business  suits  holding  cigarettes,  who  lean  over 
their  plates  the  more  confidentially  to  converse  with 
their  blond  partners,  in  this  dining-room  the  plain- 
tive call  drew  fire.  One  of  the  men  in  business 
suits,  who  was  at  a  table  with  another  man  and  two 
women,  lifted  his  head  when  he  heard  the  sound 
of  names  being  called. 

[1331 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

"  Boy!  "  he  said,  and  waved  like  a  traffic  officer 
signaling,  "  Come!  " 

Eagerly  the  page  darted  forward.  Perhaps  this 
was  Mr.  Ken  worthy!  Or  better  yet,  Mr.  Blevitch. 


oo 

"  Anything  here  for  Studz  ?  " 

"  Anything  here  for  Studz?  "  said  the  man  in  the 
business  suit,  when  he  was  sure  that  enough  people 
were  listening. 

"No,  sir,"  sighed  the  boy.  "  Mr.  Blevitch,  Mr. 
Kenworthy,  Mr.  Shriner,  Mr.  Bodkin?  "  he  sug- 
gested, hopefully. 

"  Naw,"  replied  the  man,  and  turned  to  his  asso- 
[134] 


CALL  FOR  MR.  KENWORTHY! 

ciates  with  an  air  of  saying:  "  Rotten  service  here 
: — just  think  of  it,  no  call  for  me!  " 

On  we  went  again.  The  boy  was  plainly  skep- 
tical. He  read  his  lines  without  feeling.  The  man- 
agement had  led  him  into  this;  all  he  could  do  was 
to  take  it  with  as  good  grace  as  possible. 

He  slid  past  the  coat-room  girl  at  the  exit  (no 
small  accomplishment  in  itself)  and  down  a  corridor, 
disappearing  through  a  swinging  door  at  the  end. 
I  was  in  no  mood  to  lose  out  on  the  finish  after  fol- 
lowing so  far,  and  I  dashed  after  him. 

The  door  led  into  a  little  alcove  and  another  pal- 
pitating door  at  the  opposite  end  showed  me  where 
he  had  gone.  Setting  my  jaw  for  no  particular  rea- 
son, I  pushed  my  way  through. 

At  first,  like  the  poor  olive  merchant  in  the 
Arabian  Nights  I  was  blinded  by  the  glare  of  lights 
and  the  glitter  of  glass  and  silver.  Oh,  yes,  and  by 
the  snowy  whiteness  of  the  napery,  too.  "  By  the 
napery  of  the  neck  "  wouldn't  be  a  bad  line  to  get 
off  a  little  later  in  the  story.  I'll  try  it. 

At  any  rate,  it  was  but  the  work  of  a  minute  for 
me  to  realize  that  I  had  entered  by  a  service  en- 
trance into  the  grand  dining-room  of  the  establish- 
ment, where,  if  you  are  not  in  evening  dress,  you  are 
left  to  munch  bread  and  butter  until  you  starve  to 
death  and  are  carried  out  with  your  heels  dragging, 
[1351 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

like  the  uncouth  lout  that  you  are.  It  was,  if  I  may 
be  allowed  the  phrase,  a  galaxy  of  beauty,  with 
every  one  dressed  up  like  the  pictures.  And  I  had 
entered  'way  up  front,  by  the  orchestra. 

Now,  mind  you,  I  am  not  ashamed  of  my  gray 
suit.  I  like  it,  and  my  wife  says  that  I  haven't  had 
anything  so  becoming  for  a  long  time.  But  in  it  I 
didn't  check  up  very  strong  against  the  rest  of  the 
boys  in  the  dining-room.  As  a  gray  suit  it  is  above 
reproach.  As  a  garment  in  which  to  appear  single- 
handed  through  a  trapdoor  before  a  dining-room  of 
well  dressed  Middle  Westerners  it  was  a  fizzle  from 
start  to  finish.  Add  to  this  the  items  that  I  had  to 
snatch  a  brown  soft  hat  from  my  head  when  I  found 
out  where  I  was,  which  caused  me  to  drop  the  three 
evening  papers  I  had  tucked  under  my  arm,  and 
you  will  see  why  my  up-stage  entrance  was  the  sig- 
nal for  the  impressive  raising  of  several  dozen  eye- 
brows, and  why  the  captain  approached  me  just 
exactly  as  one  man  approaches  another  when  he  is 
going  to  throw  him  out. 

(Blank  space  for  insertion  of  "  napery  of  neck" 
line,  if  desired.  Choice  optional  with  reader.) 

I  saw  that  anything  that  I  might  say  would  be 
used  against  me,  and  left  him  to  read  the  papers  I 
had  dropped.  One  only  lowers  one's  self  by  having 
words  with  a  servitor. 

[136] 


CALL  FOR  MR.  KEN  WORTHY! 

Gradually  I  worked  my  way  back  through  the 
swinging  doors  to  the  main  corridor  and  rushed 
down  to  the  regular  entrance  of  the  grand  dining- 
salon,  to  wait  there  until  my  quarry  should  emerge. 
Suppose  he  should  find  all  of  his  consignees  in  this 
dining-room!  I  could  not  be  in  at  the  death  then, 
and  would  have  to  falsify  my  story  to  make  any 
kind  of  ending  at  all.  And  that  would  never  do. 

Once  in  a  while  I  would  catch  the  scent,  when, 
from  the  humming  depths  of  the  dining-room,  I 
could  hear  a  faint  "  Call  for  Mr.  Kenworthy  "  ris- 
ing above  the  click  of  the  oyster  shells  and  the  soft 
crackling  of  the  "  potatoes  Julienne  "  one  against 
another.  So  I  knew  that  he  had  not  failed  me,  and 
that  if  I  had  faith  and  waited  long  enough  he  would 
come  back. 

And,  sure  enough,  come  back  he  did,  and  with- 
out a  name  lost  from  his  list.  I  felt  like  cheering 
when  I  saw  his  head  bobbing  through  the  melee  of 
waiters  and  'bus-boys  who  were  busy  putting  clean 
plates  on  the  tables  and  then  taking  them  off  again 
in  eight  seconds  to  make  room  for  more  clean 
plates.  Of  all  discouraging  existences  I  can  imagine 
none  worse  than  that  of  an  eternally  clean  plate. 
There  can  be  no  sense  of  accomplishment,  no  glow 
of  duty  done,  in  simply  being  placed  before  a  man 
and  then  taken  away  again.  It  must  be  almost  as 
[137] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

bad  as  paging  a  man  who  you  are  sure  is  not  in 
the  hotel. 

The  futility  of  the  thing  had  already  got  on  the 
page's  nerves,  and  in  a  savage  attempt  to  wring  a 
little  pleasure  out  of  the  task  he  took  to  welding 
the  names,  grafting  a  syllable  of  one  to  a  syllable  of 
another,  such  as  "  Call  for  Mr.  Kenbodkin — Mr. 
Shrineworthy — Mr.  Blevitcher." 

This  gave  us  both  amusement  for  a  little  while, 
but  your  combinations  are  limited  in  a  thing  like 
that,  and  by  the  time  the  grill  was  reached  he  was 
saying  the  names  correctly  and  with  a  little  more 
assurance. 

It  was  in  the  grill  that  the  happy  event  took  place. 
Mr.  Shriner,  the  one  of  whom  we  expected  least, 
suddenly  turned  up  at  a  table  alone.  He  was  a 
quiet  man  and  not  at  all  worked  up  over  his  unex- 
pected honor.  He  signaled  the  boy  with  one  hand 
and  went  on  taking  soup  with  the  other,  and  learned, 
without  emotion,  that  he  was  wanted  on  the  tele- 
phone. He  even  made  no  move  to  leave  his  meal  to 
answer  the  call,  and  when  last  seen  he  was  adding 
pepper  with  one  hand  and  taking  soup  with  the 
other.  I  suspect  that  he  was  a  "  plant,"  or  a  plain- 
clothes  house  detective,  placed  there  on  purpose  to 
deceive  me. 

We  had  been  to  every  nook  of  the  hotel  by  this 
[138] 


CALL  FOR  MR.  KENWORTHY! 

time,  except  the  writing-room,  and,  of  course,  no 
one  would  ever  look  there  for  patrons  of  the  hotel. 
Seeing  that  the  boy  was  about  to  totter,  I  went  up 
and  spoke  to  him.  He  continued  to  totter,  think- 
ing, perhaps,  that  I  was  Mr.  Kenworthy,  his  long- 
lost  beau-ideal.  But  I  spoke  kindly  to  him  and 
offered  him  a  piece  of  chocolate  almond-bar,  and 
soon,  in  true  reporter  fashion,  had  wormed  his 
secret  from  him  before  he  knew  what  I  was  really 
after. 

The  thing  I  wanted  to  find  out  was,  of  course, 
just  what  the  average  is  of  replies  to  one  paging 
trip.  So  I  got  around  it  in  this  manner:  offering 
him  another  piece  of  chocolate  almond-bar,  I  said, 
slyly:  "Just  what  is  the  average  number  of  replies 
to  one  paging  trip?  " 

I  think  that  he  had  suspected  something  at  first, 
but  this  question  completely  disarmed  him,  and, 
leaning  against  an  elderly  lady  patron,  he  told  me 
everything. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  it's  this  way:  sometimes  I  find 
a  man,  and  sometimes  I  can  go  the  rounds  without 
a  bite.  To-night,  for  instance,  here  I've  got  four 
names  and  one  came  across.  That's  about  the 
average — perhaps  one  in  six." 

I  asked  him  why  he  had  given  Mr.  Kenworthy 
such  a  handicap  at  the  start. 
[139] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

A  faint  smile  flickered  across  his  face  and  then 
flickered  back  again. 

"I  call  the  names  I  think  will  be  apt  to  hang 
round  in  the  part  of  the  hotel  I'm  in.  Mr.  Ken- 
worthy  would  have  to  be  in  the  dressy  dining- 
room  or  in  the  lobby  where  they  wait  for  ladies. 
You'd  never  find  him  in  the  bar  or  the  Turkish 
baths.  On  the  other  hand,  you'll  never  find  a  man 
by  the  name  of  Blevitch  anywhere  except  in  the  bar. 
Of  course,  I  take  a  chance  and  call  every  name  once 
in  so  often,  no  matter  where  I  am,  but,  on  the  whole, 
I  uses  my  own  discretion." 

I  gave  him  another  piece  of  chocolate  and  the 
address  of  a  good  bootmaker  and  left  him.  What  I 
had  heard  had  sobered  me,  and  the  lights  and  music 
suddenly  seemed  garish.  It  is  no  weak  emotion  to 
feel  that  you  have  been  face  to  face  with  a  mere  boy 
whose  chances  of  success  in  his  work  are  one  to  six. 

And  I  found  that  he  had  not  painted  the  lily  in 
too  glowing  terms.  I  followed  other  pages  that 
night — some  calling  for  "  Mr.  Strudel,"  some  for 
"  Mr.  Carmickle,"  and  one  was  broad-minded 
enough  to  page  a  "  Mrs.  Bemis."  But  they  all  came 
back  with  that  wan  look  in  their  eyes  and  a  break 
in  their  voices. 

And  each  one  of  them  was  stopped  by  the  man  in 
the  business  suit  in  the  downstairs  dining-room  and 
[140] 


CALL  FOR  MR.  KENWORTHY! 

each  time  he  considered  it  a  personal  affront  that 
there  wasn't  a  call  for  "  Studz." 

Some  time  I'm  going  to  have  him  paged,  and 
when  he  comes  out  I  shall  untie  his  necktie  for  aim. 


[Hi] 


XIV 
FOOTBALL;  COURTESY  OF  MR.  MORSE 

SUNDAY  morning  these  fine  fall  days  are  taken 
up  with  reading  about  the  "40,000  football 
enthusiasts"  or  the  "gaily-bedecked  crowd  of 
60,000  that  watched  the  game  on  Saturday."  And 
so  they  probably  did,  unless  there  were  enough  men 
in  big  fur  coats  who  jumped  up  at  every  play  and 
yelled  "  Now  we're  off!  "  thus  obstructing  the  view 
of  an  appreciable  percentage. 

But  why  stop  at  the  mention  of  the  paltry  50,000 
who  sat  in  the  Bowl  or  the  Stadium?  Why  forget 
the  twice  50,000  all  over  the  country,  in  Chicago, 
St.  Louis,  San  Francisco,  Atlanta,  who  watched  the 
same  game  over  the  ticker,  er  sat  in  a  smoke-fogged 
room  listening  to  telegraphic  announcements,  play 
by  play,  or  who  even  stood  on  the  curbing  in  front 
of  a  newspaper  office  and  watched  an  impartial 
employee  shove  a  little  yellow  ball  along  a  black- 
board, usually  indicating  the  direction  in  which  the 
real  football  was  not  going.  Since  it  is  so  impor- 
tant to  give  the  exact  number  of  people  who  saw  the 
[142] 


FOOTBALL 

game,  why  not  do  the  thing  up  right  and  say:  "  Re- 
turns which  are  now  coming  in  from  the  Middle 
West,  with  some  of  the  rural  districts  still  to  be 
heard  from,  indicate  that  at  least  145,566  people 
watched  the  Yale-Princeton  football  game  yester- 
day. Secretary  Dinwoodie  of  the  San  Francisco 
Yale  Club  telegraphed  late  last  night  that  the  final 
count  in  that  city  would  probably  swell  the  total  to 
a  round  150,395.  This  is,  or  will  be,  the  largest 
crowd  that  ever  assembled  in  one  country  to  watch 
a  football  game." 

And  watching  the  game  in  this  vicarious  manner 
isn't  so  bad  as  the  fellow  who  has  got  tickets  and 
carfare  to  the  real  game  would  like  to  have  it.  You 
are  in  a  warm  room,  where  you  can  stretch  your 
legs  and  regulate  your  remarks  to  the  intensity  of 
your  emotions  rather  than  to  the  sex  of  your  neigh- 
bors. And  as  for  thrills!  "Dramatic  suspense" 
was  probably  first  used  as  a  term  in  connection  with 
this  indoor  sport. 

The  scene  is  usually  some  college  club  in  the  city 
— a  big  room  full  of  smoke  and  graduates.  At  one 
end  is  a  score-board  and  miniature  gridiron,  along 
which  a  colored  counter  is  moved  as  the  telegraph 
behind  the  board  clicks  off  the  plays  hot  from  the 
real  gridiron.  There  is  also  an  announcer,  who,  by 
way  of  clarifying  the  message  depicted  on  the 
[143] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

board,  reads  the  wrong  telegram  in  a  loud,  clear 
tone. 

Just  as  the  crowd  in  the  football  arena  are  crouch- 
ing down  in  their  fur  coats  the  better  to  avoid 
watching  the  home  team  fumble  the  kick-off,  the 
crowds  two  and  ten  hundred  miles  away  are  settling 
back  in  their  chairs  and  lighting  up  the  old  pipes, 
while  the  German-silver-tongued  announcer  steps  to 
the  front  of  the  platform  and  delivers  the  following: 

"  Yale  won  the  toss  and  chose  to  defend  the  south 
goal,  Princeton  taking  the  west." 

This  mistake  elicits  much  laughter,  and  a  witty 
graduate  who  has  just  had  lunch  wants  to  know,  as 
one  man  to  the  rest  of  the  house,  if  it  is  puss-in-the- 
corner  that  is  being  played. 

The  instrument  behind  the  board  goes  "  Tick-ity- 
tick-tick-tickity." 

There  is  a  hush,  broken  only  by  the  witty  gradu- 
ate, who,  encouraged  by  his  first  success,  wants  to 
know  again  if  it  is  puss-in-the-corner  that  is  being 
played.  This  fails  to  gain. 

"  Gilblick  catches  the  kick-off  and  runs  the  ball 
back  to  his  own  3 -yard  line,  where  he  is  downed  in 
his  tracks,"  comes  the  announcement. 

There  is  a  murmur  of  incredulity  at  this.  The 
little  ball  on  the  board  shoots  to  the  middle  of  the 
field. 

[144] 


FOOTBALL 

"  Hey,  how  about  that?  "  shout  several  precincts. 

The  announcer  steps  forward  again. 

"  That  was  the  wrong  announcement,"  he  admits. 
"  Tweedy  caught  the  kick-off  and  ran  the  ball  back 
twenty-five  yards  to  midfield,  where  he  is  thrown 
for  a  loss.  On  the  next  play  there  was  a  forward 
pass,  Klung  to  Breakwater,  which — " 

Here  the  message  stops.    Intense  excitement. 

"  Tickity-tickity-tick-tickity." 

The  man  who  has  $5  on  the  game  shuts  his  eyes 
and  says  to  his  neighbor:  "  I'll  bet  it  was  inter- 
cepted." 

A  wait  of  two  triple-space  minutes  while  the  an- 
nouncer winds  his  watch.  Then  he  steps  forward. 
There  is  a  noisy  hush. 

"  It  is  estimated  that  50,000  people  filed  into  the 
Palmer  Stadium  to-day  to  watch  Yale  and  Prince- 
ton in  their  annual  gridiron  contest,"  he  reads. 
"Yale  took  the  field  at  five  minutes  of  2,  and  was 
greeted  by  salvos  and  applause  and  cheering  from 
the  Yale  section.  A  minute  later  the  Princeton  team 
appeared,  and  this  was  a  signal  for  the  Princeton 
cohorts  to  rise  as  one  man  and  give  vent  to  their 
famous  '  Undertaker's  Song.'  " 

"  How  about  that  forward  pass?  "  This,  as  one 
man,  from  the  audience. 

The  ball  quivers  and  starts  to  go  down  the  field. 
[1451 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

A  mighty  shout  goes  up.  Then  something  happens, 
and  the  ball  stops,  looks,  listens  and  turns  in  the 
other  direction.  Loud  groans.  A  wooden  slide  in 
the  mechanism  of  the  Scoreboard  rattles  into  place, 
upside  down.  Agile  spectators  figure  out  that  it 
says  "  Pass  failed." 

Every  one  then  sinks  back  and  says,  "  They 
ought  not  to  have  tried  that."  If  the  quarterback 
could  hear  the  graduates'  do-or-die  backing  of  their 
team  at  this  juncture  he  would  trot  into  the  locker 
building  then  and  there. 

Again  the  clear  voice  from  the  platform: 

"  Tweedy  punts — "  (noisy  bond-salesman  in  back 
of  room  stands  up  on  a  chair  and  yells  "  Yea!  " 
and  is  told  to  "  Shut  up  "  by  three  or  four  dozen 
neighbors)  "to  Gumble  on  his  1 5-yard  line.  Gum- 
ble  fumbles." 

The  noisy  bond-salesman  tries  to  lead  a  cheer  but 
is  prevented. 

Frightful  tension  follows.  Who  recovered? 
Whose  ball  is  it?  On  what  line?  Wet  palms  are 
pressed  against  trouser  legs.  How  about  it? 

"Tick-tickity-tick-tickity-tickity-tickity." 

You  can  hear  the  announcer's  boots  squeak  as  he 
steps  forward. 

"  Mr.  A.  T.  Blevitch  is  wanted  on  the  telephone/' 
he  enunciates. 

[146] 


FOOTBALL 

Mr.  A.  T.  Blevitch  becomes  the  most  unpopular 
man  in  that  section  of  the  country.  Every  one  turns 
to  see  what  a  man  of  his  stamp  can  look  like.  He 
is  so  embarrassed  that  he  slinks  down  in  his  seat 
and  refuses  to  answer  the  call. 


'Noisy  bond-salesman  in  back  of  room 
.    stands  up  on  chair  and  yells  '  Yea ! ' " 

"  Klung  goes  around  right  end  for  a  gain  of  two 
yards,"  is  the  next  message  from  the  front. 
The  bond-salesman  shouts  "Yea!  " 
[1471 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

"  How  about  that  fumble?  "  shouts  every  one 
else. 

The  announcer  goes  behind  the  scenes  to  talk  it 
over  with  the  man  who  works  the  Punch-and-Judy, 
and  emerges,  smiling. 

"  In  the  play  preceding  the  one  just  announced," 
he  says,  "  Gumble  fumbled  and  the  ball  was  re- 
covered by  Breakwater,  who  ran  ten  yards  for  a 
touchdown — " 

Pandemonium!  The  bond-salesman  leads  himself 
in  a  cheer.  The  witty  man  says,  "  Nothing  to  it." 

There  is  comparative  quiet  again,  and  every  one 
lights  up  the  old  pipes  that  have  gone  out. 

The  announcer  steps  forward  with  his  hand  raised 
as  if  to  regulate  traffic. 

"  There  was  a  mistake  in  the  announcement  just 
made,"  he  says  pleasantly.  "In  place  of  'touch- 
down '  read  '  touchback.'  The  ball  is  now  in  play 
on  the  2O-yard  line,  and  Kleenwell  has  just  gone 
through  center  for  three  yards." 

By  this  time  no  one  in  the  audience  has  any  defi- 
nite idea  of  where  the  ball  is  or  who  has  it.  On  the 
board  it  is  hovering  between  midfield  and  second 
base. 

"  On  the  next  play  Legly  punts — " 

"  Block  that  punt!  Block  that  punt!  "  warns  the 
bond-salesman,  as  if  it  were  the  announcer  who  was 
opposing  Legly. 

[148] 


FOOTBALL 

"Sit  down,  you  poor  fish!  "  is  the  consensus  of 
opinion. 

"Legly  punts  to  Klung  on  the  latter's  2$-yard 
line,  where  the  first  period  ends." 

And  so  it  goes  throughout  the  game;  the  an- 
nouncer calling  out  gains  and  the  dummy  football 
registering  corresponding  losses;  Messrs.  A.  T. 
Blevitch  and  L.  H.  Yank  being  wanted  on  the  tele- 
phone in  the  middle  of  forward  passes;  the  noisy 
person  in  the  back  of  the  room  yelling  "  Yea  "  on 
the  slightest  provocation  and  being  hushed  up  at 
each  outbreak;  and  every  one  wondering  what  the 
quarterback  meant  by  calling  for  the  plays  he  did. 

In  smaller  cities,  where  only  a  few  are  gathered 
together  to  hear  the  results,  things  are  not  done  on 
such  an  elaborate  scale.  The  dummy  gridiron  and 
the  dummy  announcer  are  done  away  with  and  the 
ten  or  a  dozen  rooters  cluster  about  the  news  ticker, 
most  of  them  with  the  intention  of  watching  for 
just  a  few  minutes  and  then  going  home  or  back  to 
the  office.  And  they  always  wait  for  just  one  more 
play,  shifting  from  one  foot  to  the  other,  until  the 
game  is  over. 

About  a  ticker  only  the  three  or  four  lucky  ones 
can  see  the  tape.  The  rest  have  to  stand  on  tip-toe 
and  peer  over  the  shoulders  of  the  man  in  front. 
They  don't  care.  Some  one  will  always  read  the 
results  aloud,  just  as  a  woman  will  read  aloud  the 
[149] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

cut-ins  at  the  movies.  The  one  who  is  doing  the 
reading  usually  throws  in  little  advance  predictions 
of  his  own  when  the  news  is  slow  in  coming,  with 
the  result  that  those  in  the  back  get  the  impression 
that  the  team  has  at  least  a  "  varied  attack,"  effect- 
ing at  times  a  field  goal  and  a  forward  pass  in  the 
same  play. 

A  critical  period  in  the  game,  as  it  comes  dribbling 
in  over  the  ticker,  looks  something  like  this: 

YALE  .  PRINCTON  .  GAME. . .  .CHEKFMKL 

KLUNG  .  GOES  .  AROUND  .  LEFT  . 

END  .  FOR  .  A  .  GAIN  .  OF  .  YDS A 

.  FORWARD  .  PASS  .  TWEEDY  .  TO  .  KLUNG 

.  NETS (Ticker  stops  ticking). 

Murmurs  of  "  Come  on,  there,  whasser  matter?  " 
Some  one  suggests  that  the  pass  was  illegal  and 
that  the  whole  team  has  been  arrested. 
The  ticker  clears  its  throat.    Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r 
The  ticker  stabs  off  a  line  of  dots  and  begins: 
"  BOWIE  .  FIRST  .  RACE.  .MEASLES  .  FIRST 
. .  13.60  . .  AND  . .  6.00  . .  WHORTLEBERRY    . 
SCND   .  PLACE   .  3.80  ..  EMMA   GOLDMAN, 
THIRD.. TIME    .    1.09.4.5.  .NON    .    START    . 
PROCRASTINATION  .  UNCLE  TOM'S  CABIN  " 
A  few  choice  remarks  are  passed  in  the  privacy 
of  the  little  circle,  to  just  the  effect  that  you  would 
suspect. 

A  newcomer  elbows  his  way  in  and  says:  "  What's 
[150] 


FOOTBALL 

the  good  word?  Any  score  yet?  "  and  some  one 
replies:  "Yes.  The  score  now  stands  206  to  o  in 
favor  of  Notre  Dame."  This  grim  pleasantry  is  ex- 
pressive of  the  sentiment  of  the  group  toward  new- 
comers. It  is  each  man  for  himself  now. 

Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! 

"  Here  she  comes,  now!  "  whispers  the  man  who  is 
hanging  over  the  glass  news  terminal,  reading  aloud: 
"  Yale-Princeton-Game-Second  Quarter  (Good-night, 
what  became  of  that  forward  pass  in  the  first 
quarter  ?  )  Yale's  -  ball  -  in  -  mid  -  field  -  Hornung  - 
takes  -  ball  -  around  -  left  -  end  -  making  -  it  -  first  - 
down  -  Tinfoil  -  drops  -  back  -  for  -  a  -  try  -  at  -  a  - 
field  -  goal.  (Oh,  boy!  Come  on,  now! )  " 

"  Why  the  deuce  do  they  try  a  field  goal  on  the 
first  down?  "  asks  a  querulous  graduate-strategist. 
"Now,  what  he  ought  to  do  is  to  keep  a-plugging 
there  at  tackle,  where  he  has  been  going — " 

Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! 

"  Bet  he  missed  it!  "  offers  some  one  with  vague 
gambling  instincts. 

".  .INS.  NEEDLES.  .1%.  .ZINC.  .CON.  .4^ 
..WASHN..THE  CENSUS  .  OFFICE  .  ESTI- 
MATES .  THE  CONSUMPTION  .  OF  COTTON 
.  WASTE  .  IN  .  THE  .  MFGR  .  OF  .  AUTO- 
MBLE  .  HOODS  .  AS  .  66.991.059  LBS.  .  IN- 
CLUDING .  LINTERS  .  AND  .  HULL  .. 
FIBER.." 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

And  just  then  some  one  comes  in  from  the  out- 
side, all  fresh  and  disagreeably  cheery,  and  wants 
to  know  what  the  score  is  and  if  there  have  been 
many  forward  passes  tried  and  who  is  playing 
quarter  for  Yale,  and  if  any  one  has  got  a  cigarette. 

It  is  really  just  the  same  sort  of  program  as  ob- 
tains in  the  big  college  club,  only  on  a  small  scale. 
They  are  all  watching  the  same  game  and  they  are 
all  wishing  the  same  thing  and  before  their  respec- 
tive minds'  eyes  is  the  picture  of  the  same  stadium, 
with  the  swarm  of  queen  bees  and  drones  clinging 
to  its  sides.  And  every  time  that  you,  who  are  one 
of  the  cold  and  lucky  ones  with  a  real  ticket,  see  a 
back  break  loose  for  a  long  run  and  hear  the  explo- 
sion of  hoarse  shouts  that  follows,  you  may  count 
sixty  and  then  listen  to  hear  the  echo  from  every  big 
city  in  the  country  where  the  old  boys  have  just 
got  the  news. 


[152] 


XV 
A  LITTLE  DEBIT  IN  YOUR  TONNEAU 

MOTORISTS,  as  a  class,  are  not  averse  to 
public  discussion  of  their  troubles.  In  fact, 
one  often  wonders  how  some  of  them  ever  get  time 
to  operate  their  cars,  so  tied  up  do  they  seem  to  be 
with  these  little  experience-meetings,  at  which  one 
man  tells,  with  appropriate  gestures,  how  he  ran  out 
of  gas  between  Springfield  and  Worcester,  while 
another  gives  a  perfect  bit  of  character  acting  to 
show  just  how  the  policeman  on  the  outskirts  of 
Trenton  behaved. 

But  there  seems  to  be  one  phase  of  the  motorist's 
trials  which  he  never  bares  to  the  public.  He  will 
confide  to  you  just  how  bad  the  gasoline  was  that 
he  bought  at  the  country  garage;  he  will  make  it  an 
open  secret  that  he  had  four  blow-outs  on  the  way 
home  from  the  country-club;  but  of  one  of  his  most 
poignant  sorrows  he  never  speaks.  I  refer  to  the 
guests  who  snuggle  in  his  tonneau. 

Probably  more  irritations  have  arisen  from  the 
tonneau  than  from  the  tires,  day  in  and  day  out,  and 
yet  you  never  hear  a  man  say,  "  Well,  I  certainly 
[153] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

had  an  unholy  crew  of  camp-followers  out  with  me 
to-day — friends  of  my  wife."  Say  what  you  will, 
there  is  an  innate  delicacy  in  the  average  motorist, 
or  such  repression  could  not  be. 

Consider  the  types  of  tonneau  guests.  They  are 
as  generic  and  fundamental  as  the  spectrum  and  you 
will  find  them  in  Maine  and  New  Mexico  at  the 
same  time. 

There  is  the  first,  or  major,  classification,  which 
may  be  designated  as  the  Financially  Paralyzed. 
Persons  in  this  class,  on  stepping  into  your  machine, 
automatically  transfer  all  their  money  troubles  to 
you.  You  become,  for  the  duration  of  the  ride, 
whether  it  be  to  the  next  corner  or  to  Palm  Beach, 
their  financial  guardian,  and  any  little  purchases 
which  are  incidental  to  the  trip  (such  as  three  meals 
a  day)  belong  to  your  list  of  running  expenses." 
There  seems  to  be  something  about  the  motion  of 
the  automobile  that  inhibits  their  ability  to  reach 
for  their  purses,  and  they  become,  if  you  want  to 
be  poetical  about  it,  like  clay  in  the  hands  of  the 
potter.  Whither  thou  goest  they  will  go;  thy  check- 
book is  their  check-book.  It  is  just  like  the  one 
great,  big,  jolly  family — of  which  you  are  the  father 
and  backer. 

Such  people  always  make  a  great  to-do  about 
starting  off  on  a  trip.  You  call  for  them  and  they 
[154] 


A  LITTLE  DEBIT 

appear  at  the  window  and  wave,  to  signify  that  they 
see  you,  and  go  through  motions  to  show  that  just 
as  soon  as  Clara  has  put  on  her  leggings  they  will 
be  down.  Soon  they  appear,  swathed  in  a  tremen- 
dous quantity  of  motor  wraps  and  veils  (you  can 
usually  tell  the  guests  in  a  car  by  the  number  of 
head-veils  they  wear)  and  get  halfway  down  the 
walk,  when  Clara  remembers  her  rain-coat  and  has 
to  swish  back  upstairs,  veils  and  all.  Out  again,  and 
just  as  they  get  wedged  into  the  tonneau,  the  elderly 
guest  wonders  if  there  is  time  for  some  one  to  run 
in  again  and  tell  Helma  that  if  the  Salvation  Army 
man  comes  for  the  old  magazines  she  is  to  tell  him 
to  come  again  to-morrow.  By  the  time  this  message 
is  relayed  to  Helma  Garcia  one  solid  half -hour  has 
been  dissipated  from  the  cream  of  the  morning. 
This  does  not  prevent  the  guests  from  remarking,  as 
the  motor  starts,  that  it  certainly  is  a  heavenly  day 
and  that  it  couldn't  have  been  better  if  it  had  been 
ordered.  Knowing  the  type,  you  can  say  to  your- 
self that  if  the  day  had  been  ordered  you  know  who 
would  have  had  to  give  the  order  and  pay  the  check. 
From  that  time  on,  you  are  the  moneyed  interest 
behind  the  venture.  Meals  at  road-houses,  toll 
charges,  evening  papers,  hot  chocolates  at  the  coun- 
try drug  store,  hair  net  for  Clara,  and,  of  course,  a 
liberal  injection  of  gasoline  on  the  way  home,  all  of 
[155] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

these  items  and  about  fourteen  others  come  in  your 
bailiwick.  The  guests  have  been  asked  out  for  a 
ride,  and  "  findings  is  keepings."  If  you  have 
money  enough  to  run  a  car,  you  probably  have 
money  enough  to  support  them  for  a  day  or  so. 
That's  only  fair,  isn't  it? 


^ 

He  always  has  a  quip  to  snap  at  you  to  keep  you 
cheered  up." 


Under  a  sub-head  (a),  in  this  same  category, 
come  the  guests  who  are  stricken  with  rigor  mortis 
when  there  are  any  repairs  to  be  made  about  the 
machine.  Male  offenders  in  this  line  are,  of  course, 
the  only  ones  that  can  be  dealt  with  here;  putting 
on  a  tire  is  no  job  for  women  and  children.  But  the 
man  who  is  the  life  of  the  party  in  the  tonneau 
throughout  the  trip,  who  thinks  nothing  of  climbing 
all  over  the  back  of  the  car  in  imitation  of  a  Roman 
charioteer,  will  suddenly  become  an  advocate  of  the 
basic  eight-hour  working  day  which  began  just  eight 


A  LITTLE  DEBIT 

hours  before,  whenever  there  is  a  man's  work  to  be 
done  on  one  of  the  tires.  He  will  watch  you  while 
you  work,  and  always  has  a  good  word  to  say  or  a 
quip  to  snap  at  you  to  keep  you  cheered  up,  but 
when  it  comes  to  taking  off  his  coat  and  lending  a 
hand  at  the  jack  he  is  an  Oriental  incense-holder  on 
the  guest-room  mantel.  He  admits  in  no  uncertain 
tones,  that  he  is  a  perfect  dub  when  it  comes  to 
handling  machinery  and  that  he  is  more  apt  to  be 
in  the  way  at  a  time  like  this  than  not.  And  maybe 
he  is  right,  after  all. 

We  next  come  to  the  class  of  tonneau-freight  who 
are  great  believers  in  what  Professor  Muensterberg 
called  "Auto-Suggestion."  These  people,  although 
not  seated  in  the  driver's  seat,  have  their  own  ideas 
on  driving  and  spare  no  pains  to  put  their  theories 
in  the  form  of  suggestions.  In  justice  to  the  Great 
Army  of  the  Unemployed  known  as  "  guests  "  it 
must  be  admitted  that  a  large  percentage  of  these 
suggestions  emanate  from  some  member  of  the  own- 
er's family  and  not  from  outsiders.  It  is  very  often 
Mrs.  Wife  who  is  off-side  in  this  play,  but  as  she  is 
usually  in  the  tonneau,  she  comes  under  the  same 
classification. 

There  are  various  ways  of  framing  suggestions  to 
the  driver  from  the  back  seat.    They  are  all  equally 
annoying.    Among  the  best  are: 
[157] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

"For  heaven's  sake,   George,  turn  in  a   little. 

There  is  a  car  behind  that  wants  to  pass  us." 
"  Look  out  where  you're  going,  Stan." 
"  Henry,  if  you  don't  slow  down  I'm  going  to  get 

out  and  take  the  train  back  home." 


"  If  this  is  accompanied  with  a  clutching  gesture  at  the  driver's 
arm,  it  is  sure  to  throw  him  into  a  good  humor." 


If  this  is  accompanied  by  a  clutching  gesture  at 
the  driver's  arm  it  is  sure  to  throw  him  into  a  good 
humor  for  the  rest  of  the  trip,  so  that  a  good  time 
will  be  had  by  all  present. 

Although  guests  are  not  so  prone  to  make  sugges- 
tions on  the  running  of  the  car  as  are  those  who, 
through  the  safety  of  family  connection,  may  do  so 
without  fear  of  bodily  assault  from  the  driver,  never- 
theless, a  guest  may,  according  to  the  code,  lean 
over  the  back  of  the  seat  and  slip  little  hints  as  to 
the  route.  Especially  if  one  of  them  be  entrusted 
with  a  Blue  Book  does  this  form  of  auto-suggestion 
become  chronic. 

"  It  says  here  that  we  should  have  taken  that  road 
[158] 


A  LITTLE  DEBIT 

to  the  right  back  there  by  the  Soldiers'  Monument," 
informs  the  reader  over  your  shoulder.     Or — 

"  Somehow  this  doesn't  seem  like  the  right  road. 
Personally,  I  think  that  we  ought  to  turn  around 
and  go  back  to  the  cross-roads." 

If  it  is  Mrs.  Wife  in  the  tonneau  who  has  her  own 
ideas  on  the  route,  you  might  as  well  give  in  at  her 
first  suggestion,  for  the  risk  that  she  is  right  is  too 
great  to  run.  If  she  says  that  she  would  advise  tak- 
ing the  lane  that  runs  around  behind  that  school- 
house,  take  it.  Then,  if  it  turns  out  to  be  a  blind 
alley,  you  have  the  satisfaction  of  saying  nothing, 
very  eloquently  and  effectively.  But  if  you  refuse 
to  take  her  suggestion,  and  your  road  turns  out  to 
be  even  halfway  wrong,  you  might  as  well  turn  the 
wheel  over  to  your  little  son  and  go  South  for  the 
winter,  for  you  will  never  hear  the  ultimate  cry  of 
triumph.  Your  season  will  practically  be  ruined.  I 
can  quote  verbatim  from  the  last  affair  of  this  kind: 

(Voice  from  the  tonneau) :  "  Albert,  I  think  we 
ought  to  have  taken  the  road  at  the  left." 

"  No,  we  hadn't." 

"  I'm  sure  of  it.  I  saw  a  sign  which  said:  c  Pax- 
ton  '  on  it." 

"  No,  you  didn't." 

"  Well,  you  wait  and  see." 

"  I'm  waiting." 

[159] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

There  is  a  silence  for  ten  minutes,  while  the  car 
jounces  along  a  road  which  gets  narrower  and 
rockier. 

(Voice  from  the  tonneau) :  "  I  suppose  you  think 
this  is  the  way  to  Paxton?  " 

"  I  certainly  do." 

"  Oh,  you  make  me  sick!  " 

Silence  and  jounces. 

Sudden  stop  as  the  road  ends  at  a  silo. 

"I  beg  your  pardon  [addressed  to  a  rustic], 
which  is  the  road  to  Paxton?  " 

"  Paxton?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  The  road  to  Paxton?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  Well,  you  go  back  over  the  rud  you  just  come 
over,  about  three  mile,  till  you  come  to  a  rud  turnin' 
off  to  the  right  with  a  sign  which  says  c  Paxton.'  " 

(Voice  from  the  tonneau,  beginning  at  this  point 
and  continuing  all  of  the  way  back,  all  the  rest  of 
the  day  and  night,  and  until  snow  falls) :  "  There! 
what  did  I  tell  you?  But,  oh  no,  you  know  it  all. 
Didn't  I  tell  you  "—etc.,  etc. 

On  the  whole,  it  would  seem  that  the  artists  who 
draw  the  automobile  advertisements  make  a  mistake 
in  drawing  the  tonneau  so  roomy  and  so  full  of  peo- 
ple.   There  should  be  no  tonneau. 
[160] 


XVI 


A  ROMANCE  IN  ENCYCLOPEDIA  LAND 

Written  After  Three  Hours'  Browsing  in  a  New 
Britannica  Set 

FCTURE  to  yourself  an  early  spring  afternoon 
along  the  banks  of  the  river  Aa,  which,  rising 
in  the  Teutoburger  Wald,  joins  the  Werre  at  Her- 
ford  and  is  navigable  as  far  as  St.  Omer. 

Branching  bryophytu  spread  their  flat,  dorsi- 
ventral  bodies,  closely  applied  to  the  sub-stratum  on 
which  they  grew,  and  leafy  carophyllacese  twined 
their  sepals  in  prodigal  profusion,  lending  a  touch  of 
color  to  the  scene.  It  was 
clear  that  nature  was  in 
preparation  for  her  estiva- 
tion. 

But  it  was  not  this 
which  attracted  the  eye  of 
the  young  man  who,  walk- 
ing along  the  phonolithic 
formation  of  the  river- 
bank,  was  playing  softly  to  himself  on  a  double  cur- 
tail, or  converted  bass-pommer,  an  octave  below  the 
[161] 


"  Was  playing  softly  to 
himself  on  a  double  curtail 
or  converted  bass-pommer." 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

single  curtail  and  therefore  identical  in  pitch  and 
construction  with  the  early  fagotto  in  C. 

His  mind  was  on  other  things. 

He  was  evidently  of  Melanochronic  extraction, 
with  the  pentagonal  facial  angle  and  strong  obital 
ridges,  "but  he  combined  with  this  the  fine  lines  of  a 
full-blooded  native  of  Coll,  where,  indeed,  he  was 
born,  seven  miles  west  of  Caliach  Point,  in  Mull, 
and  in  full  view  of  the  rugged  gneiss. 

As  he  swung  along,  there  throbbed  again  and 
again  through  his  brain  the  beautiful  opening  para- 
graph of  Frantisek  Palacky's  (1798-1876)  "  Zur 
bohmischen  Geschichtschreibung  "  (Prague,  1871), 
written  just  after  the  author  had  refused  a  portfolio 
in  the  Pillersdorf  Cabinet  and  had  also  declined  to 
take  part  in  the  preliminary  diet  at  Kromerice. 

"  If  he  could  believe  such  things,  why  can  not 
I? "  murmured  the  young  man,  and  crushed  a 
ginkgo  beneath  his  feet.  Young  men  are  often  so. 
It  is  due  to  the  elaterium  of  spring. 

"  By  Ereshkigal,"  he  swore  softly  to  himself,  "  I'll 
do  it." 

No  sooner  had  he  spoken  than  he  came  suddenly 
out  of  the  tangle  of  gymnosperms  through  whose 
leaves,  needle-like  and  destitute  of  oil-glands  as  they 
were,  he  had  been  making  his  way,  and  emerged  to  a 
full  view  of  the  broad  sweep  of  the  Lake  of  Zug, 
[162] 


IN  ENCYCLOPEDIA  LAND 


just  where  the  Lorze  enters  at  its  northern  extremity 
and  one  and  a  quarter  miles  east  of  where  it  issues 
again  to  pursue  its  course  toward  the  Reuss.  Zug, 
at  this  point,  is  1,368  feet  above  sea-level,  and 
boasted  its  first  steamer  in  1852. 

"  Well,"  he  sighed,  as  he  gazed  upon  the  broad 
area  of  subsidence,  "if  I 
were  now  an  exarch,  whose 
dignity  was,  at  one  time,  in- 
termediate between  the  Pa- 
triarchal and  the  Metropoli- 
tan and  from  whose  name 
has  come  that  of  the  politico- 
religious  party,  the  Exarch- 
ists,  I  should  not  be  here 
day-dreaming.  I  should  be 
far  away  in  Footscray,  a  city 
of  Bourke  County,  Victoria, 
Australia,  pop.  (1901)  18,301." 

And  as  he  said  this  his  eyes  filled  with  tears,  and 
under  his  skin,  brown  as  fustic,  there  spread  a  faint 
flush,  such  as  is  often  formed  by  citrocyde,  or  by 
pyrochloric  acid  when  acting  on  uncured  leather. 

Far  down  in  the  valley  the  natives  were  celebrat- 
ing the  birthday  of  Gambrinus,  a  mythical  Flemish 
king  who  is  credited  with  the  first  brewing  of  beer. 
The  sound  of  their  voices  set  in  motion  longitudinal 
[163] 


"He  came  suddenly  out 

of  the  tangle  of  gymno- 

sperms." 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

sound  waves,  and  these,  traveling  through  the  sur- 
rounding medium,  met  the  surface  separating  two 
media  and  were  in  part  reflected,  traveling  back 
from  the  surface  into  the  first  medium  again  with 
the  velocity  with  which  they  approached  it,  as  de- 
picted in  Fig.  10.  This  caused  the  echo  for  which 
the  Lake  of  Zug  is  justly  famous. 

The  twilight  began  to  deepen  and  from  far  above 
came  the  twinkling  signals  of,  first,  Bootes,  then 
Coma  Berenices,  followed,  awhile  later,  by  Ursa 
Major  and  her  little  brother,  Ursa  Minor. 

"  The  stars  are  clear  to-night,"  he  sighed.  "  I 
wonder  if  they  are  visible  from  the  dacite  elevation 
on  which  SHE  lives." 

His  was  an  untrained  mind.  His  only  school  had 
been  the  Eleatic  School,  the  contention  of  which  was 
that  the  true  explanation  of  things  lies  in  the  con- 
ception of  a  universal  unity  of  being,  or  the  All-ness 
of  One. 

But  he  knew  what  he  liked. 

In  the  calm  light  of  the  stars  he  felt  as  if  a  uban 
had  been  lifted  from  his  heart,  5  ubans  being  equal 
to  i  quat,  6  quats  to  i  ammat  and  120  ammats  to 

I    SOS. 

He  was  free  again. 

Turning,  he  walked  swiftly  down  into  the  valley, 
passing  returning  peasants  with  their  baa-poots,  and 
[164] 


IN  ENCYCLOPEDIA  LAND 


'She  turned  like  a  fright- 
ened aadvark."     (Male, 
greatly  reduced.) 


sleepy  drone,  like 
many  cichlids.  It  was  all 
very  home-like  to  the  wan- 
derer. 

Suddenly  there  ap- 
peared on  a  neighboring 
eminence  a  party  of  gui- 
sards,  such  as,  during  the 
Saturnalia,  and  from  the 
Nativity  till  the  Epiphany 
were  accustomed  to  dis- 
port themselves  in  odd 
costumes;  all  clad  in 
clouting,  and  evidently  re- 
turning from  taking  part 
in  the  celebration. 

As   they   drew   nearer, 


soon  came  in  sight  of  the 
shining  lamps  of  the  small 
but  carefully  built  pooroos 
which  lined  the  road. 

Reaching  the  corner  he 
saw  the  village  epi  peering 
over  the  tree-tops,  and 
swarms  of  cicada,  with  the 
toothed  famoras  of  their  an- 
terior legs  mingling  in  a 
so 


[165] 


Barnaby  Bernard  Weenix." 
(1777-1829.) 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 


our  hero  noticed  a  young  woman  in  the  front  rank 
who  was  playing  folk-songs  on  a  cromorne  with  a 
double-reed  mouth-piece  enclosed  in  an  air-reservoir. 
In  spite  of  the  detritus 
wrought  by  the  festival, 
there  was  something  fa- 
miliar about  the  buccina- 
tor of  her  face  and  her 
little  mannerism  of  elevat- 
ing her  second  phalanx. 
It  struck  him  like  the  flash 
of  a  cloud  highly  charged 
by  the  coalescence  of 
drops  of  vapor.  He  ap- 
proached her,  tenderly, 
reverently. 

"  Lange,  Anne  Fran- 
Qoise  Elizabeth,"  he  said, 
"  I  know  you.  You  are 
a  French  actress,  born  in 
Genoa  on  the  seventeenth  of  September,  1772,  and 
you  made  your  first  appearance  on  the  stage  in 
L'Ecossaise  in  1788.  Your  talent  and  your  beauty 
gave  you  an  enormous  success  in  Pamela.  It  has 
taken  me  years  to  find  you,  but  now  we  are  united 
at  last." 

The  girl  turned  like  a  frightened  aard-vark,  still 
[166] 


"  Why  not  to  Wem  ?  " 

(From  a  contemporaneous 

print.) 


IN  ENCYCLOPEDIA  LAND 

holding  the  cromorne  in  her  hand.    Then  she  smiled. 

"  Weenix,  Barnaby  Bernard  (1777-1829),"  she 
said  very  slowly,  "  you  started  business  as  a  pub- 
lisher in  London  about  1797." 

They  looked  at  each  other  for  a  moment  in  silence. 
He  was  the  first  to  speak. 

"  Miss  Lange,  Anne,"  he  said,  "  let  us  go  together 
to  Lar — and  be  happy  there — happy  as  two  ais,  or 
three-toed  South  American  sloths." 

She  lowered  her  eyes. 

"I  will  go  with  you  Mr.  Weenix-Barney,"  she 
said,  "  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  But  why  to  Lar? 
Why  not  to  Wem?  " 

"  Because,"  said  the  young  man,  "  Lar  is  the  capi- 
tal of  Laristan,  in  27  degrees,  30  minutes  N.,  180 
miles  from  Shiraz,  and  contains  an  old  bazaar  con- 
sisting of  four  arcades  each  180  feet  long." 

Their  eyes  met,  and  she  placed  her  hands  in  his. 

And,  from  the  woods,  came  the  mellow  whinnying 
of  a  herd  of  vip,  the  wool  of  which  is  highly  valued 
for  weaving. 


[167] 


XVII 

THE  PASSING  OF  THE  ORTHODOX 
PARADOX 

WHATEVER  irreparable  harm  may  have  been 
done  to  Society  by  the  recent  epidemic  of 
crook,  sex  and  other  dialect  plays,  one  great  allevia- 
tion has  resulted.  They  have  driven  up-stage,  for 
the  time  being,  the  characters  who  exist  on  tea  and 
repartee  in  "  The  drawing-room  of  Sir  Arthur 
Peaversham's  town  house,  Grosvenor  Square.  Time: 
late  Autumn." 

A  person  in  a  crook  play  may  have  talked  under- 
world patois  which  no  self-respecting  criminal  would 
have  allowed  himself  to  utter,  but  he  did  not  sit  on 
a  divan  and  evolve  abnormal  bons  mots  with  each 
and  every  breath.  The  misguided  and  misinformed 
daughter  in  the  Self  and  Sex  Play  may  have  lisped 
words  which  only  an  interne  should  hear,  but  she 
did  not  offer  a  succession  of  brilliant  but  meaning- 
less paradoxes  as  a  substitute  for  real  conversation. 

Continuously  snappy  back-talk  is  now  encoun- 
tered chiefly  in  such  acts  as  those  of  "  Cooney  & 
LeBlanc,  the  Eccentric  Comedy  Dancing  Team." 
[168] 


THE  ORTHODOX  PARADOX 

And  even  they  manage  to  scrape  along  without  the 
paradoxes. 

But  there  was  a  time,  beginning  with  the  Oscar 
Wilde  era,  when  no  unprotected  thought  was  safe. 


"  Snappy  back-talk  is  now  encountered  chiefly  in  such  acts  as 
'  Cooney  and  Le  Blanc,  the  Eccentric  Comedy  Dancing  Team.' " 

It  might  be  seized  at  any  moment  by  an  English 
Duke  or  a  Lady  Agatha  and  strangled  to  death. 
Even  the  butlers  in  the  late  'eighties  were  wits,  and 
served  epigrams  with  cucumber  sandwiches;  and  a 
person  entering  one  of  these  drawing-rooms  and 
talking  in  connected  sentences — easily  understood 
by  everybody — each  with  one  subject,  predicate  and 
meaning,  would  have  been  looked  upon  as  a  high 
class  moron.  One  might  as  well  have  gone  to  a  din- 
[i69J 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

ner  at  Lady«Coventry's  without  one's  collar,  as  with- 
out one's  kit  of  trained  paradoxes. 

A  late  Autumn  afternoon  in  one  of  these  semi- 


The  butlers  served  epigrams  with  the  cucumber  sandwiches." 


Oscar  Wilde  plays,  for  instance,  would  run  some- 
thing like  this: 

SCENE — The  Octagon  Room  in  Lord  Raymond 
Eaveston's  Manor  House  in  Stropshire. 

LADY  EAVESTON  and  SIR  THOMAS  WAFFLETON 
are  discovered,  arranging  red  flowers  in  a  vase. 

SIR  T.:  I  detest  red  flowers;  they  are  so  yellow. 

LADY  E.:  What  a  cynic  you  are,  Sir  Thomas.  I 
really  must  not  listen  to  you  or  I  shall  hear  some- 
thing that  you  say. 

[170] 


THE  ORTHODOX  PARADOX 

SIR  T.:  Not  at  all,  my  dear  Lady  Eaveston.  I 
detest  people  who  listen  closely;  they  are  so  inat- 
tentive. 

LADY  E.:  Pray  do  not  be  analytical,  my  dear  Sir 
Thomas.  When  people  are  extremely  analytical 
with  me  I  am  sure  that  they  are  superficial,  and,  to 
me,  nothing  is  more  abominable  than  superficiality, 
unless  perhaps  it  is  an  intolerable  degree  of  thor- 
oughness. 

(Enter  Meadows,  the  Butler} 

MEADOWS  (announcing}:  Sir  Mortimer  Longley 
and  Mrs.  Wrennington, — a  most  remarkable  couple, 
— I  may  say  in  announcing  them, — in  that  there  is 
nothing  at  all  remarkable  about  them. 

(Enter  Sir  Mortimer  and  Mrs.  Wrennington) 

MRS.  W.:  So  sorry  to  be  late,  dear  Lady  Eaves- 
ton.  But  it  is  so  easy  to  be  on  time  that  I  always 
make  it  a  point  to  be  late.  It  lends  poise,  and  poise 
is  a  charming  quality  for  any  woman  to  have,  am  I 
not  right,  Sir  Thomas? 

SIR  T.:  You  are  always  right,  my  dear  Mrs. 
Wrennington,  and  never  more  so  than  now,  for  I 
know  of  no  more  attractive  attribute  than  poise,  un- 
less perhaps  it  be  embarrassment. 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

LADY  E.:  What  horrid  cynics  you  men  are! 
Really,  Sir  Thomas,  one  might  think,  from  your 
sophisticated  remarks  that  you  had  been  brought 
up  in  the  country  and  had  seen  nothing  of  life. 

SIR  T.:  And  so  I  have  been,  my  dear  Lady  Eaves- 
ton.  To  my  mind,  London  is  nothing  but  the  coun- 
try, and  certainly  Stropshire  is  nothing  but  a 
metropolis.  The  difference  is,  that  when  one  is  in 
town,  one  lives  with  others,  and  when  one  is  in  the 
country,  others  live  with  one.  And  both  plans  are 
abominable. 

MRS.  W.:  What  a  horrid  combination!  I  hate 
horrid  combinations;  they  always  turn  out  to  be  so 
extremely  pleasant. 

(Enter  Meadows') 

MEADOWS  (announcing'):  Sir  Roland  Pinsham- 
ton;  Viscount  Lemingham;  Countess  Trotski  and 
Mr.  Peters.  In  announcing  these  parties  I  cannot 
refrain  from  remarking  that  it  has  always  been  my 
opinion  that  a  man  who  intends  to  get  married 
should  either  know  something  or  nothing,  preferably 
both. 

(Exit  Meadows} 

COUNTESS  T.:  So  sorry  to  be  late,  my  dear  Lady 
Eaveston.  It  was  charmingly  tolerant  of  you  to 
have  us. 

[172] 


THE  ORTHODOX  PARADOX 

LADY  E.:  Invitations  are  never  tolerant,  my  dear 
Countess;  acceptances  always  are.  But  do  tell  me, 
how  is  your  husband,  the  Count, — or  perhaps  he  is 
no  longer  your  husband.  One  never  knows  these 
days  whether  a  man  is  his  wife's  husband  or  whether 
she  is  simply  his  wife. 

COUNTESS  T.  (lighting  a  cigarette):  Really,  Lady 
Eaveston,  you  grow  more  and  more  interesting.  I 
detest  interesting  people;  they  are  so  hopelessly  un- 
interesting. It  is  like  beautiful  people — who  are 
usually  so  singularly  unbeautiful.  Has  not  that  been 
your  experience,  Sir  Mortimer? 

SIR  M.:  May  I  have  the  pleasure  of  escorting  you 
to  the  music-room,  Mrs.  Wrennington? 

(Exeunt  omnes  to  music-room  jor  dinner) 
Curtain. 

It  is  from  this  that  we  have,  in  a  measure,  been 
delivered  by  the  court-room  scenes,  and  all  the 
medical  dramas.  But  the  paradox  still  remains  in- 
trenched in  English  writing  behind  Mr.  G.  K.  Ches- 
terton, and  he  may  be  considered,  by  literary  tac- 
ticians, as  considerable  stronghold. 

Here  again  we  find  our  commonplaces  shaken  up 
until  they  emerge  in  what  looks  like  a  new  and  tre- 
mendously imposing  shape,  and  all  of  them  osten- 
sibly proving  the  opposite  of  what  we  have  always 
[173] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

understood.  If  we  do  not  quite  catch  the  precise 
meaning  at  first  reading,  we  lay  it  to  our  imperfect 
perception  and  try  to  do  better  on  the  next  one.  It 
seldom  occurs  to  us  that  it  really  may  have  no  mean- 
ing at  all  and  never  was  intended  to  have  any,  any 
more  than  the  act  of  hanging  by  your  feet  from 
parallel  bars  has  any  further  significance  than  that 
you  can  manage  to  do  it. 

So,  before  retiring  to  the  privacy  of  our  personal 
couches,  let  us  thank  an  all  wise  Providence,  that 
the  drama-paradox  has  passed  away. 


Ii74l 


XVIII 
SHAKESPEARE  EXPLAINED 

Carrying  on  the  System  of  Footnotes  to  a  Silly 
Extreme 

PERICLES 

ACT  II.    SCENE  3 

Enter   first   Lady-in-Waiting    (Flourish,1   Haut- 
boys 2  and 3  torches 4) . 

First    Lady-in-Waiting— What5    ho!6     Where *i 
is 8  the 9  music?  10 

NOTES 

i.  Flourish:  The  stage  direction  here  is  obscure. 
Clarke  claims  it  should  read  "  flarish,"  thus  chang- 
ing the  meaning  of  the  passage  to  "  flarish  "  (that 
is,  the  King's),  but  most  authorities  have  agreed 
that  it  should  remain  "flourish,"  supplying  the 
predicate  which  is  to  be  flourished.  There  was  at 
this  time  a  custom  in  the  countryside  of  England 
to  flourish  a  mop  as  a  signal  to  the  passing  vender 
of  berries,  signifying  that  in  that  particular  house- 
hold there  was  a  consumer-demand  for  berries,  and 
[I75J 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

this  may  have  been  meant  in  this  instance.  That 
Shakespeare  was  cognizant  of  this  custom  of  flour- 
ishing the  mop  for  berries  is  shown  in  a  similar 
passage  in  the  second  part  of  King  Henry  IV,  where 


"  Might  be  one  of  the  hautboys  bearing  a  box 
of  "  trognies  "  for  the  actors  to  suck. 

he  has  the  Third  Page  enter  and  say,  "  Flourish." 
Cf.  also  Hamlet,  IV,  7:  4. 

2.   Hautboys,   from   the  French  haut,  meaning 

"  high  "  and  the  Eng.  boys,  meaning  "  boys."    The 

word  here  is  doubtless  used  in  the  sense  of  "high 

boys,"  indicating  either  that  Shakespeare  intended 

[176] 


SHAKESPEARE  EXPLAINED 

to  convey  the  idea  of  spiritual  distress  on  the  part 
of  the  First  Lady-in- Waiting  or  that  he  did  not.  Of 
this  Rolfe  says:  "  Here  we  have  one  of  the  chief  in- 
dications of  Shakespeare's  knowledge  of  human  na- 
ture, his  remarkable  insight  into  the  petty  foibles 
of  this  work-a-day  world."  Cf.  T.  N.  4:  6,  "  Mine 
eye  hath  play'd  the  painter,  and  hath  stelPd  thy 
beauty's  form  in  table  of  my  heart." 

3.  and.    A  favorite  conjunctive  of  Shakespeare's 
in  referring  to  the  need  for  a  more  adequate  navy 
for  England.    Tauchnitz  claims  that  it  should  be 
pronounced  "  und,"  stressing  the  anti-penult.    This 
interpretation,  however,  has  found  disfavor  among 
most  commentators  because  of  its  limited  signifi- 
cance.   We  find  the  same  conjunctive  in  A.  W.  T.  E. 
W.  6:  7,  "  Steel-boned,  unyielding  and  uncomplying 
virtue,"  and  here  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Shake- 
speare meant  that  if  the  King  should  consent  to 
the  marriage  of  his  daughter  the  excuse  of  Stephano, 
offered  in  Act  2,  would  carry  no  weight. 

4.  Torches.    The  interpolation  of  some  foolish 
player  and  never  the  work  of  Shakespeare  (Warb.). 
The  critics  of  the  last  century  have  disputed  whether 
or  not  this  has  been  misspelled  in  the  original,  and 
should  read  "  trochies  "  or  "  troches."    This  might 
well  be  since  the  introduction  of  tobacco  into  Eng- 
land at  this  time  had  wrought  havoc  with  the  speak- 

[1771 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

ing  voices  of  the  players,  and  we  might  well  imagine 
that  at  the  entrance  of  the  First  Lady-in- Waiting 
there  might  be  perhaps  one  of  the  hautboys  men- 
tioned in  the  preceding  passage  bearing  a  box  of 
troches  or  "  trognies  "  for  the  actors  to  suck.  Of 
this  entrance  Clarke  remarks:  "The  noble  mixture 
of  spirited  firmness  and  womanly  modesty,  fine  sense 
and  true  humility,  clear  sagacity  and  absence  of  con- 
ceit, passionate  warmth  and  sensitive  delicacy,  gen- 
erous love  and  self-diffidence  with  which  Shakespeare 
has  endowed  this  First  Lady-in-Waiting  renders 
her  in  our  eyes  one  of  the  most  admirable  of  his 
female  characters."  Cf.  M.  S.  N.  D.  8:  9,  "That 
solder'st  close  impossibilities  and  mak'st  them  kiss." 

5.  What— What. 

6.  Ho!    In  conjunction  with  the  preceding  word 
doubtless  means  "  What  ho!  "  changed  by  Clarke  to 
"  What  hoo!  "    In  the  original  MS.  it  reads  "  What 
hi!  "  but  this  has  been  accredited  to  the  tendency 
of  the  time  to  write  "  What  hi  "  when  "  what  ho  " 
was  meant.    Techner  alone  maintains  that  it  should 
read  "  What  humpf !  "    Cf.  Ham.  5:0,"  High-ho!  " 

7.  Where.    The  reading  of  the  folio,  retained  by 
Johnson,  the  Cambridge  editors  and  others,  but  it 
is  not  impossible  that  Shakespeare  wrote  "why," 
as  Pope  and  others  give  it.    This  would  make  the 
passage  read  "  Why  the  music?"  instead  of  "  Where 

[178] 


SHAKESPEARE  EXPLAINED 

is  the  music?  "  and  would  be  a  much  more  probable 
interpretation  in  view  of  the  music  of  that  time.  Cf . 
George  Ade.  Fable  No.  15,  "Why  the  gunny- 
sack?  " 

8.  is — is  not.    That  is,  would  not  be. 

9.  the.    Cf.Ham.4:6.    M.  S.  N.  0.3:5.   A.  W. 
T.  E.  W.  2 :  6.    T.  N.  i :  3  and  Macbeth  3:1,"  that 
knits  up  the  raveled  sleeves  of  care." 

10.  music.    Explained  by  Malone  as  "  the  art  of 
making  music  "  or  "  music  that  is  made."    If  it  has 
but  one  of  these  meanings  we  are  inclined  to  think 
it  is  the  first;  and  this  seems  to  be  favored  by  what 
precedes,  "the  music!  "    Cf.  M.  of  V.  4:  2,  "The 
man  that  hath  no  music  in  himself." 

The  meaning  of  the  whole  passage  seems  to  be 
that  the  First  Lady-in-Waiting  has  entered,  con- 
comitant with  a  flourish,  hautboys  and  torches  and 
says,  "  What  ho!  Where  is  the  music?  " 


[I79l 


XIX 

THE  SCIENTIFIC  SCENARIO 

SOONER  or  later  some  one  is  going  to  come  out 
and  say  that  the  movies  are  too  low-brow.  I 
can  just  see  it  coming.  Maybe  some  one  has  said 
it  already,  without  its  having  been  brought  to  my 
attention,  as  I  have  been  very  busy  for  the  past 
two  weeks  on  my  yearly  accounts  (my  accounts  for 
the  year  1920,  I  mean.  What  with  one  thing  and 
another,  I  am  a  bit  behind  in  my  budget  system). 

And  whenever  this  denouncement  of  the  movies 
takes  place,  the  first  thing  that  is  going  to  be  spe- 
cifically criticized  is  the  type  of  story  which  is  now 
utilized  for  scenarios.  How  can  a  nation  hope  to 
inject  any  culture  in  the  minds  of  its  people  if  it 
feeds  them  with  moving-picture  stories  dealing  with 
elemental  emotions  like  love,  hate,  and  a  passion 
for  evening-dress?  Scenarios  to-day  have  no  cul- 
tural background.  That's  the  trouble  with  them. 
They  have  no  cultural  background. 

Now,  if  we  are  to  make  the  movies  count  for 

anything  in  the  mental  development  of  our  people, 

we  must  build  them  of  sterner  stuff.    We  must  make 

them  from  stories  and  books  which  are  of  the  mind 

[i  80] 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SCENARIO 

rather  than  of  the  body.  The  action  should  be 
cerebral,  rather  than  physical,  and  instead  of  thrill- 
ing at  the  sight  of  two  horsemen  galloping  along  a 
cliff,  we  should  be  given  the  opportunity  of  seeing 
two  opposing  minds  doing  a  rough-and-tumble  on 
the  edge  of  a  nice  problem  in  Dialectics  or  Meta- 
physics. 

I  would  suggest  as  a  book,  from  which  a  pretty 
little  scenario  might  be  made,  "  The  Education  of 
Henry  Adams."  This  volume  has  had  a  remarkable 
success  during  the  past  year  among  the  highly  edu- 
cated classes.  Public  library  records  show  that  more 
people  have  lied  about  having  read  it  than  any 
other  book  in  a  decade.  It  contains  five  hundred 
pages  of  mental  masochism,  in  which  the  author  tor- 
^tures  himself  for  not  getting  anywhere  in  his  brain 
processes.  He  just  simply  can't  seem  to  get  any 
further  than  the  evolution  of  an  elementary  Dy- 
namic Theory  of  History  or  a  dilettante  dabbling 
with  a  Law  of  Acceleration.  And  he  came  of  a  bright 
family,  too. 

I  don't  go  in  much  for  scenario  writing  myself, 
but  I  am  willing  to  help  along  the  cause  of  better 
moving-pictures  by  offering  herewith  an  outline  for 
a  six-reel  feature  entitled  "THE  EDUCATION 
OF  HENRY  ADAMS;  or  WHY  MINDS  GO 
WRONG." 

[181] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

CAST  OF  CHARACTERS 
Henry  Adams. 
Left  Frontal  Brain  Lobe. 
Right  Frontal  Brain  Lobe. 
Manservant. 

Crowd  of  Villagers,  Reflexes,  Complexes, 
and  Mental  Processes. 

The  first  scene  is,  according  to  the  decorated  cap- 
tion: "  IN  THE  HARVARD  COLLEGE  STUDY  OF  HENRY 
ADAMS,  SCION  OF  AN  OLD  NEW  ENGLAND  FAMILY, 
THE  NIGHT  BEFORE  THE  BIG  CEREBRAL  FUNCTION 
OF  His  YOUNG  MANHOOD." 

Henry  Adams,  a  Junior,  is  discovered  sitting  at  his 
desk  in  his  room  in  Holworthy  Hall.  He  has  a  note- 
book on  the  Glacial  Period  and  Palaeontology  open 
in  front  of  him.  He  is  thinking  of  his  Education. 
(Flash-back  showing  courses  taken  since  Freshman 
year.  Pianist  plays  "  Carry  Me  Back  to  Old  Vir- 
ginie")  He  bites  his  under  lip  and  turns  a  page  of 
his  notes. 

Caption:  "  DOES  TRANSCENDENTALISM  HOLD  THE, 
KEY?  ...  I  WONDER  .  .  ." 

(Fade-out  showing  him  biting  his  upper  Up,  still 
thinking.) 

The  second  scene  is  laid  in  Rome. 

Caption:  "HERE,  AFTER  A  YEAR'S  WANDERING 
[182] 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SCENARIO 

THROUGH  THE  HAPPY,  SMILING  LANDS  OF  EUROPE, 
COMES  YOUNG  HENRY  ADAMS  IN  His  SEARCH  FOR 
EDUCATION.  AND  Now,  IN  THE  SHADOW  OF  AN- 


1  Thrilling  moment  in  'The  Education  of  Henry  Adams.' 


CIENT  ROME,  HE  FINDS  PEACE,  BUT  NOT  THAT 
PEACE  FOR  WHICH  HE  SOUGHT." 

He  is  discovered  sitting  on  a  rock  among  the  ruins 
of  the  Capitol,  thinking.  He  tosses  a  pebble  from 
one  hand  to  another  and  scowls.  The  shadows 
deepen,  and  he  rises,  passing  his  hand  across  his 
brow.  (Flash-back  showing  the  Latin  verbs  which 
govern  the  dative  case.  Pianist  plays:  "  The  March 
of  the  Jolly  Grenadiers."} 

He  walks  slowly  to  the  Museo  Nazionale,  where 
[183] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

he  stands  pondering  before  a  statue  of  Venus,  think- 
ing about  Roman  art  and  history — and  about  his 
Education. 

Caption:  "CAN  ALL  THIS  BE  FITTED  INTO  A 
TIME-SEQUENCE?  CAN  RIENZI,  GARIBALDI,  TI- 
BERIUS GRACCHUS,  AURELIAN,  ANY  OF  THESE  FA- 
MOUS NAMES  OF  ROME,  BE  ADAPTED  TO  A  SYS- 
TEMATIC SCHEME  OF  EVOLUTION?  No,  No  ...  A 
THOUSAND  TIMES,  No!  " 

He  sinks  down  on  a  rock  and  weeps  bitterly. 

The  next  scene  is  in  England  and  our  hero  is  found 
sitting  at  a  desk  in  his  study  in  London.  He  is  gaz- 
ing into  space — thinking. 

Caption:  "AND  so,  ALL  THROUGH  THE  LONG, 
WEARY  SUMMER,  HENRY  ADAMS  SAT,  HEAD  IN 
HAND,  WONDERING  IF  DARWIN  WAS  RIGHT.  To 
HIM  THE  GLACIAL  EPOCH  SEEMED  LIKE  A  YAWN- 
ING CHASM  BETWEEN  A  UNIFORMITARIAN  WORLD 
AND  HIMSELF.  IF  THE  GLACIAL  PERIOD  WERE  UNI- 
FORMITY, WHAT  WAS  CATASTROPHE?  .  .  .  AND  TO 
THIS  QUESTION,  THE  COOL  OF  THE  SUMMER'S 
EVENING  IN  SHROPSHIRE  BROUGHT  NO  RELIEF." 

He  rises  slowly  and  goes  to  the  book-shelves,  from 
which  he  draws  a  copy  of  "  The  Origin  of  Species." 
Placing  it  before  him  on  the  desk  he  turns  the  pages 
slowly  until  he  comes  to  one  which  holds  his  atten- 
tion. 

[184] 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SCENARIO 

Close-up  oj  page  126,  on  which  is  read:  "  It  is 
notorious  that  specific  characters  are  more  variable 
than  generic.  .  .  . 

Feet 
Palaezoic  strata  (not  including  igneous 

beds)    57,154 

Secondary  strata *3>i9O 

Tertiary  strata 2,400  " 

The  book  drops  to  the  floor  from  his  nerveless 
fingers  and  he  buries  his  head  in  his  arms,  sobbing. 
(Music:  "  When  You  and  I  Were  Young,  Maggie.") 

"  TWENTY  YEARS  AFTER  .  .  .  HENRY  ADAMS  Is 
NO  LONGER  YOUNG,  BUT  IN  His  HEART  LIES  STILL 
THE  HUNGER  FOR  EDUCATION.  GOING  FORWARD, 
EVER  FORWARD,  HE  REALIZES  AS  NEVER  BEFORE 
THAT  WITHOUT  THOUGHT  IN  THE  UNIT,  THERE 
CAN  BE  NO  UNITY.  THOUGHT  ALONE  Is  FORM. 
MIND  AND  UNITY  FLOURISH  OR  PERISH  TOGETHER." 

(Allegorical  flash-back  showing  Mind  and  Unity 
perishing  together.) 

The  hero  is  now  seen  seated  in  a  Morris  chair  in 
Washington,  touching  his  finger-tips  together  in  a 
ruminative  manner.  Arising  slowly,  he  goes  to  the 
window  and  looks  out  over  Lafayette  Square.  Then 
he  lights  a  cigar  and  goes  back  to  his  chair.  He 
[185] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

is  pondering  and  -attempting  to  determine  when,  be- 
tween 3000  B.C.  and  1000  A.D.  the  momentum  of  Eu- 
rope was  greatest,  as  exemplified  in  mathematics  by 
such  masters  as  Archimedes,  Aristarchus,  Ptolemy 
and  Euclid. 

(Flash-back  showing  the  mathematical  theories 
of  Archimedes,  Aristarchus,  Ptolemy  and  Euclid. 
Music:  "  Old  Ireland  Shall  Be  Free.") 

Rising  from  his  chair  again,  he  paces  the  floor, 
clenching  his  hands  behind  his  back  in  mute  fury. 

Caption :  "  GOD  HAVE  MERCY  ON  ME  1  I  CAN 
SEE  IT  ALL — I  HAVE  NEVER  BEEN  EDUCATED!  " 

NEXT  WEEK:  BERT  LYTELL  IN 

"  SARTOR  RESARTUS  " 

A  SMASHING  SIX-REEL  FEATURE 

BY  TOM  CARLYLE 


[186] 


XX 

THE  MOST  POPULAR  BOOK  OF  THE 
MONTH 

NEW  YORK  CITY  (including  all  Boroughs)  TELEPHONE 
DIRECTORY — N.  Y.  Telephone  Co.,  N.  Y.  1920.  8vo. 
1208  pp. 

IN  picking  up  this  new  edition  of  a  popular  fa- 
vorite, the  reviewer  finds  himself  confronted  by 
a  nice  problem  in  literary  ethics.  The  reader  must 
guess  what  it  is.  * 

There  may  be  said  to  be  two  classes  of  people  in 
the  world;  those  who  constantly  divide  the  people 
of  the  world  into  two  classes,  and  those  who  do  not. 
Both  classes  are  extremely  unpleasant  to  meet  so- 
cially, leaving  practically  no  one  in  the  world  whom 
one  cares  very  much  to  know.  This  feeling  is  made 
poignant,  to  the  point  of  becoming  an  obsession,  by 
a  careful  reading  of  the  present  volume. 

We  are  herein  presented  to  some  five  hundred 
thousand  characters,  each  one  deftly  drawn  in  a 
line  or  two  of  agate  type,  each  one  standing  out 
from  the  rest  in  bold  relief.  It  is  hard  to  tell  which 
one  is  the  most  lovable.  In  one  mood  we  should 
[187] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

say  W.  S.  Custard  of  Minnieford  Ave.  In  another, 
more  susceptible  frame  of  mind,  we  should  stand  by 
the  character  who  opens  the  book  and  who  first  in- 
troduces us  into  this  Kingdom  of  Make-Believe — 


"  The  most  popular  book  on  earth." 

Mr.  V.  Aagaard,  the  old  "  Impt.  &  Expt."  How  one 
seems  to  see  him,  impting  and  expting  all  the  hot 
summer  day  through,  year  in  and  year  out,  always 
heading  the  list,  but  always  modest  and  unassum- 
ing, always  with  a  kindly  word  and  a  smile  for 
passers-by  on  Broadway! 

It  is  perhaps  inaccurate  to  say  that  V.  Aagaard 

introduces  us  to  the  book.    He  is  the  first  flesh-and- 

blood  human  being  with  whom  the  reader  comes 

in  contact,  but  the  initial  place  in  the  line  should 

[188] 


THE  MOST  POPULAR  BOOK 

technically  go  to  the  A.  &  A.  A.  Excelsior  Co.  Hav- 
ing given  credit  where  credit  is  due,  however,  let 
us  express  our  personal  opinion  that  this  name  is  a 
mere  trick,  designed  to  crowd  out  all  other  com- 
petitors in  the  field  for  the  honor  of  being  in  the 
premiere  position,  for  it  must  be  obvious  to  any 
one  with  any  perception  at  all  that  the  name  doesn't 
make  sense.  No  firm  could  be  named  the  A.  & 
A.  A.  Co.,  and  the  author  of  the  telephone  directory 
might  better  have  saved  his  jokes  until  the  body 
of  the  book.  After  all,  Gelett  Burgess  does  that  sort 
of  thing  much  better  than  any  one  else  could  hope 
to. 

But,  beginning  with  V.  Aagaard  and  continuing 
through  to  Mrs.  L.  Zyjers  of  Yettman  Ave.,  the 
reader  is  constantly  aware  of  the  fact  that  here  are 
real  people,  living  in  a  real  city,  and  that  they 
represent  a  problem  which  must  be  faced. 

Sharp  as  we  find  the  character  etching  in  the 
book,  the  action,  written  and  implied,  is  even  more 
remarkable.  Let  us,  for  instance,  take  Mr.  Saml 
Dreylinger,  whose  business  is  "  Furn  Reprg,"  or 
Peter  Shalijian,  who  does  "  pmphlt  bindg."  Into 
whose  experience  do  these  descriptions  not  fit?  The 
author  need  only  mention  a  man  bindg  pmphlts  to 
bring  back  a  flood  of  memories  to  each  and  every 
one  of  us — perhaps  our  old  home  town  in  New  Eng- 
[189] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

land  where  bindg  pmphlts  was  almost  a  rite  dur- 
ing the  long  winter  months,  as  well  as  a  social 
function  of  no  mean  proportions.  It  is  the  ability 
to  suggest,  to  insinuate,  these  automatic  memories 
on  the  part  of  the  reader  without  the  use  of  extra 
words  that  makes  the  author  of  this  work  so  worthy 
of  the  name  of  craftsman  in  the  literary  annals  of 
the  day. 

Perhaps  most  deft  of  all  is  the  little  picture  that 
is  made  of  Louise  Winkler,  who  is  the  village  "  sclp 
spclst."  One  does  not  have  to  know  much  medieval 
history  to  remember  the  position  that  the  sclp  spclst 
used  to  hold  in  the  community  during  the  Wars  of 
the  Roses.  Or  during  Shay's  Rebellion,  for  that  mat- 
ter. In  those  days,  to  be  a  sclp  spclst  was  as  impor- 
tant a  post  as  that  of  "  clb  bdg  stbls  "  (now  done 
for  New  York  City  by  Mr.  Graham).  People  came 
from  miles  around  to  consult  with  the  local  sclp 
spclst  on  matters  pertaining  not  only  to  sclps  but 
to  knt  gds  and  wr  whls,  both  of  which  departments 
of  our  daily  life  have  now  been  delegated  to  sepa- 
rate agencies.  Then  gradually,  with  the  growth  of 
the  trade  guild  movement,  there  came  the  Era  of 
Specialization  in  Industry,  and  the  high  offices  of 
the  sclp  spclst  were  dissipated  among  other  trades, 
until  only  that  coming  strictly  under  the  head  of 
sclp  speclzng  remained.  To  this  estate  has  Miss 
[190] 


THE  MOST  POPULAR  BOOK 

Winkler  come,  and  in  that  part  of  the  book  which 
deals  with  her  and  her  work,  we  have,  as  it  were, 
a  little  epic  on  the  mutability  of  human  endeavor. 
It  is  all  too  short,  however,  and  we  are  soon  there- 
after plunged  into  the  dreary  round  of  expting  and 
impting,  this  time  through  a  character  called  /. 
Wubbe,  who  is  interesting  only  in  so  far  as  he  is 
associated  with  M.  Wrubel  and  A.  N.  Wubbenhorst, 
all  of  whom,  come  together  at  the  bottom  of  the 
column. 

The  plot,  in  spite  of  whatever  virtues  may  accrue 
to  it  from  the  acid  delineation  of  the  characters  and 
the  vivid  action  pictures,  is  the  weakest  part  of 
the  work.  It  lacks  coherence.  It  lacks  stability. 

Perhaps  this  is  because  of  the  nature  of  the  book 
itself.  Perhaps  it  is  because  the  author  knew  too 
well  his  Dunsany.  Or  his  Wells.  Or  his  Bradstreet. 
But  it  is  the  opinion  of  the  present  reviewer  that 
the  weakness  of  plot  is  due  to  the  great  number 
of  characters  which  clutter  up  the  pages.  The  Rus- 
sian school  is  responsible  for  this.  We  see  here  the 
logical  result  of  a  sedulous  aping  of  those  writers 
such  as  Tolstoi,  Andreief,  Turgenief,  Dostoiefsky, 
or  even  Pushkin,  whose  metier  it  was  to  fill  the  pages 
of  their  books  with  an  inordinate  number  of  char- 
acters, many  of  whom  the  reader  was  to  encounter 
but  once,  let  us  say,  on  the  Nevsky  Prospekt  or  in 
[191] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

the  Smolny  Institute,  but  all  of  whom  added  their 
peculiar  names  (we  believe  that  we  will  not  offend 
when  we  refer  to  Russian  names  as  "  peculiar  ")  to 
the  general  confusion  of  the  whole. 

In  practice,  the  book  is  not  flawless.  There  are 
five  hundred  thousand  names,  each  with  a  corre- 
sponding telephone  number.  But,  through  some 
error  in  editing,  the  numbers  are  all  wrong.  Proof 
of  this  may  be  had  by  the  simple  expedient  of  call- 
ing up  any  one  of  the  subscribers,  using  the  number 
assigned  by  the  author  to  that  name.  (Any  name 
will  do — let  us  say  Nicholas  Wimpie-H&rlem  2131.) 
If  the  call  is  put  in  bright  and  early  in  the  morning, 
the  report  will  come  over  the  wire  just  as  the  lights 
are  going  on  for  evening  of  the  same  day  that  "  Har- 
lem 2131  does  not  answer."  The  other  numbers 
are  invariably  equally  unproductive  of  results.  The 
conclusion  is  obvious. 

Aside  from  this  point  the  book  is  a  success. 


[192] 


XXI 

CHRISTMAS  AFTERNOON 
Done  in  the  Manner,  if  Not  the  Spirit,  of  Dickens 

WHAT  an  afternoon  1  Mr.  Gummidge  said 
that,  in  his  estimation,  there  never  had  been 
such  an  afternoon  since  the  world  began,  a  senti- 
ment which  was  heartily  endorsed  by  Mrs.  Gum- 
midge  and  all  the  little  Gummidges,  not  to  mention 
the  relatives  who  had  come  over  from  Jersey  for 
the  day. 

In  the  first  place,  there  was  the  ennui.  And  such 
ennui  as  it  was !  A  heavy,  overpowering  ennui,  such 
as  results  from  a  participation  in  eight  courses  of 
steaming,  gravied  food,  topping  off  with  salted  nuts 
which  the  little  old  spinster  Gummidge  from  Oak 
Hill  said  she  never  knew  when  to  stop  eating — 
and  true  enough  she  didn't — a  dragging,  devitalizing 
ennui,  which  left  its  victims  strewn  about  the  living- 
room  in  various  attitudes  of  prostration  suggestive 
of  those  of  the  petrified  occupants  in  a  newly  un- 
earthed Pompeiian  dwelling;  an  ennui  which  car- 
ried with  it  a  retinue  of  yawns,  snarls  and  thinly 
[193] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 


CHRISTMAS  AFTERNOON 

veiled  insults,  and  which  ended  in  ruptures  in  the 
clan  spirit  serious  enough  to  last  throughout  the 
glad  new  year. 

Then  there  were  the  toys!  Three  and  a  quarter 
dozen  toys  to  be  divided  among  seven  children. 
Surely  enough,  you  or  I  might  say,  to  satisfy  the 
little  tots.  But  that  would  be  because  we  didn't 
know  the  tots.  In  came  Baby  Lester  Gummidge, 
Lillian's  boy,  dragging  an  electric  grain-elevator 
which  happened  to  be  the  only  toy  in  the  entire 
collection  which  appealed  to  little  Norman,  five- 
year-old  son  of  Luther,  who  lived  in  Rahway.  In 
came  curly-headed  Erne  in  frantic  and  throaty  dis- 
putation with  Arthur,  Jr.,  over  the  possession  of  an 
articulated  zebra.  In  came  Everett,  bearing  a  me- 
chanical negro  which  would  no  longer  dance,  owing 
to  a  previous  forcible  feeding  by  the  baby  of  a 
marshmallow  into  its  only  available  aperture.  In 
came  Fonlansbee,  teeth  buried  in  the  hand  of  little 
Ormond,  which  bore  a  popular  but  battered  remnant 
of  what  had  once  been  the  proud  false-bosom  of  a 
hussar's  uniform.  In  they  all  came,  one  after  an- 
other, some  crying,  some  snapping,  some  pulling, 
some  pushing — all  appealing  to  their  respective  par- 
ents for  aid  in  their  intra-mural  warfare. 

And  the  cigar  smoke!  Mrs.  Gummidge  said  that 
she  didn't  mind  the  smoke  from  a  good  cigarette, 
[195] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

but  would  they  mind  if  she  opened  the  windows 
for  just  a  minute  in  order  to  clear  the  room  of 
the  heavy  aroma  of  used  cigars?  Mr.  Gummidge 
stoutly  maintained  that  they  were  good  cigars.  His 
brother,  George  Gummidge,  said  that  he,  likewise, 
would  say  that  they  were.  At  which  colloquial  sally 
both  the  Gummidge  brothers  laughed  testily,  thereby 
breaking  the  laughter  record  for  the  afternoon. 

Aunt  Libbie,  who  lived  with  George,  remarked 
from  the  dark  corner  of  the  room  that  it  seemed 
just  like  Sunday  to  her.  An  amendment  was  of- 
fered to  this  statement  by  the  cousin,  who  was  in 
the  insurance  business,  stating  that  it  was  worse 
than  Sunday.  Murmurings  indicative  of  as  hearty 
agreement  with  this  sentiment  as  their  lethargy 
would  allow  came  from  the  other  members  of  the 
family  circle,  causing  Mr.  Gummidge  to  suggest  a 
walk  in  the  air  to  settle  their  dinner. 

And  then  arose  such  a  chorus  of  protestations  as 
has  seldom  been  heard.  It  was  too  cloudy  to  walk. 
It  was  too  raw.  It  looked  like  snow.  It  looked 
like  rain.  Luther  Gummidge  said  that  he  must  be 
starting  along  home  soon,  anyway,  bringing  forth 
the  acid  query  from  Mrs.  Gummidge  as  to  whether 
or  not  he  was  bored.  Lillian  said  that  she  felt  a 
cold  coming  on,  and  added  that  something  they  had 
had  for  dinner  must  have  been  undercooked.  And 
[196] 


CHRISTMAS  AFTERNOON 

so  it  went,  back  and  forth,  forth  and  back,  up  ana 
down,  and  in  and  out,  until  Mr.  Gummidge's  sug- 
gestion of  a  walk  in  the  air  was  reduced  to  a  tat- 
tered impossibility  and  the  entire  company  glowed 
with  ill-feeling. 

In  the  meantime,  we  must  not  forget  the  chil- 
dren. No  one  else  could.  Aunt  Libbie  said  that 
she  didn't  think  there  was  anything  like  children  to 
make  a  Christmas;  to  which  Uncle  Ray,  the  one 
with  the  Masonic  fob,  said,  "No,  thank  God!" 
Although  Christmas  is  supposed  to  be  the  season 
of  good  cheer,  you  (or  I,  for  that  matter)  couldn't 
have  told,  from  listening  to  the  little  ones,  but  what 
it  was  the  children's  Armageddon  season,  when  Na- 
ture had  decreed  that  only  the  fittest  should  sur- 
vive, in  order  that  the  race  might  be  carried  on  by 
the  strongest,  the  most  predatory  and  those  pos- 
sessing the  best  protective  coloring.  Although  there 
were  constant  admonitions  to  Fonlansbee  to  "  Let 
Ormond  have  that  whistle  now;  it's  his,"  and  to 
Arthur,  Jr.,  not  to  be  selfish,  but  to  "  give  the  kiddie- 
car  to  Effie;  she's  smaller  than  you  are,"  the  net 
result  was  always  that  Fonlansbee  kept  the  whistle 
and  Arthur,  Jr.,  rode  in  permanent,  albeit  disputed, 
possession  of  the  kiddie-car.  Oh,  that  we  mortals 
should  set  ourselves  up  against  the  inscrutable  work- 
ings of  Nature  1 

[197] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

Hallo!  A  great  deal  of  commotion!  That  was 
Uncle  George  stumbling  over  the  electric  train, 
which  had  early  in  the  afternoon  ceased  to  func- 
tion and  which  had  been  left  directly  across  the 


"  Hallo  !    A  great  deal  of  commotion !  "* 

threshold.  A  great  deal  of  crying!  That  was  Ar- 
thur, Jr.,  bewailing  the  destruction  of  his  already 
useless  train,  about  which  he  had  forgotten  until 
the  present  moment.  A  great  deal  of  recrimination! 
That  was  Arthur,  Sr.,  and  George  fixing  it  up.  And 
finally  a  great  crashing!  That  was  Baby  Lester 
pulling  over  the  tree  on  top  of  himself,  necessi- 
tating the  bringing  to  bear  of  all  of  Uncle  Ray's 
[198] 


CHRISTMAS  AFTERNOON 

knowledge  of  forestry  to  extricate  him  from  the 
wreckage. 

And  finally  Mrs.  Gummidge  passed  the  Christ- 
mas candy  around.  Mr.  Gummidge  afterward  ad- 
mitted that  this  was  a  tactical  error  on  the  part  of 
his  spouse.  I  no  more  believe  that  Mrs.  Gum- 
midge thought  they  wanted  that  Chrismas  candy 
than  I  believe  that  she  thought  they  wanted  the 
cold  turkey  which  she  later  suggested.  My  opin- 
ion is  that  she  wanted  to  drive  them  home.  At  any 
rate,  that  is  what  she  succeeded  in  doing.  Such 
cries  as  there  were  of  "  Ugh!  Don't  let  me  see  an- 
other thing  to  eat!  "  and  "  Take  it  away!  "  Then 
came  hurried  scramblings  in  the  coat-closet  for  over- 
shoes. There  were  the  rasping  sounds  made  by 
cross  parents  when  putting  wraps  on  children. 
There  were  insincere  exhortations  to  "  come  and  see 
us  soon  "  and  to  "  get  together  for  lunch  some  time." 
And,  finally,  there  were  slammings  of  doors  and 
the  silence  of  utter  exhaustion,  while  Mrs.  Gum- 
midge went  about  picking  up  stray  sheets  of  wrap- 
ping paper. 

And,  as  Tiny  Tim  might  say  in^  speaking  of 
Christmas  afternoon  as  an  institution,  "  God  help 
us,  every  one." 


[199] 


XXII 
HAIL,  VERNAL  EQUINOX! 

IF  all  that  I  hear  is  true,  a  great  deal  has  been 
written,  first  and  last,  about  that  season  which 
we  slangily  call  "  Spring  ";  but  I  don't  remember 
ever  having  seen  it  done  in  really  first-class  form; — 
that  is,  in  such  a  way  that  it  left  something  with  you 
to  think  over,  something  that  you  could  put  your 
finger  on  and  say,  "There,  there  is  a  Big,  Vital 
Thought  that  I  can  carry  away  with  me  to  my 
room." 

What  Spring  really  needs  is  a  regular  press-agent 
sort  of  write-up,  something  with  the  Punch  in  it, 
an  article  that  will  make  people  sit  up  and  say  to 
themselves,  "  By  George,  there  must  be  something 
in  this  Spring  stuff,  after  all." 

What  sort  of  popularity  did  Education  have  until 
correspondence  schools  and  encyclopedias  began  to 
give  publicity  to  it  in  their  advertisements?  Where 
would  Music  be  to-day  if  it  were  not  for  the  ex- 
hortations of  the  talking-machine  and  mechanical- 
piano  companies  telling,  through  their  advertising- 
copy  writers,  of  the  spiritual  exaltation  that  comes 
[200] 


HAIL,  VERNAL  EQUINOX  I 

from  a  love  of  music?  These  things  were  all  right 
in  their  way  before  the  press-agent  took  hold  of 
them,  but  they  never  could  have  hoped  to  reach 
their  present  position  without  him. 

Of  course,  all  this  has  just  been  leading  up  to 
the  point  I  want  to  make, — that  something  more 
ought  to  be  written  about  Spring.  When  you  con- 
sider that  every  one,  including  myself,  agrees  that 
nothing  more  should  be  written  about  it,  I  think 
that  I  have  done  rather  well  to  prove  as  much  as 
I  have  so  far.  And,  having  got  this  deep  into  the 
thing,  I  can't  very  well  draw  back  now. 

Well  then,  Spring  is  a  great  season.  Nobody  will 
gainsay  me  that.  Without  it,  we  should  crash  right 
from  Winter  into  Summer  with  no  chance  to  shift 
to  light-weight  underwear.  I  could  write  a  whole 
piece  about  that  phase  of  it  alone,  and,  if  I  were 
pressed  for  things  to  say,  I  myself  could  enlarge 
on  it  now,  making  up  imaginary  conversation  of 
people  who  have  been  caught  in  balbriggans  by  the 
first  sweltering  day  of  summer.  But  I  have  so  many 
more  things  to  say  about  Spring  that  I  can't  stop 
to  bother  with  deadwood  like  that.  Such  literary 
fillerbusting  should  be  left  to  those  who  are  not  so 
full  of  their  subject  as  I  am. 

In  preparing  for  this  article,  I  thought  it  best 
to  look  up  a  little  on  the  technical  side  of  Spring, 
[201] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

about  which  so  little  is  known,  at  least  by  me.  And, 
would  you  believe  it,  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica, 
which  claims  in  its  advertisements  not  only  to  make 
its  readers  presidents  of  the  Boards  of  Directors  of 
any  companies  they  may  select,  but  also  shows  how 
easy  it  would  be  for  Grandpa  or  Little  Edna  to  carry 
the  whole  set  about  from  room  to  room,  if,  by  any 
possible  chance  they  should  ever  want  to,  this  same 
Encyclopedia  Britannica  makes  no  reference  to 
Spring,  except  incidentally,  along  with  Bed  Springs 
and  Bubbling  Springs. 

This  slight  of  one  of  our  most  popular  seasons  is 
probably  due  to  the  fact  that  Spring  is  not  ex- 
clusively a  British  product  and  was  not  invented 
by  a  Briton.  Had  Spring  been  fortunate  enough  to 
have  had  the  Second  Earl  of  Stropshire-Stropshire- 
Stropshire  as  one  of  its  founders,  the  Britannica 
could  probably  have  seen  its  way  clear  to  give  it  a 
five-page  article,  signed  by  the  Curator  of  the  Jade 
Department  in  the  British  Museum,  and  illustrated 
with  colored  plates,  showing  the  effect  of  Spring 
on  the  vertical  and  transverse  sections  of  the  stamen 
of  the  South  African  Euphorbiceae. 

I  was  what  you  might,  but  probably  wouldn't, 
call  stunned  at  not  finding  anything  about  the  Sea- 
son of  Love  in  the  encyclopedia,  for  without  that 
assistance  what  sort  of  a  scientific  article  could 
[202] 


HAIL,  VERNAL  EQUINOX! 

I  do  on  the  subject?  I  am  not  good  at  improvising 
as  I  go  along,  especially  in  astronomical  matters. 
But  we  Americans  are  not  so  easily  thwarted.  Quick 
as  a  wink  I  looked  up  "  Equinox." 

There  is  a  renewed  agitation  of  late  to  abolish 
Latin  from  our  curricula.  Had  I  not  known  my 
Latin  I  never  could  have  figured  out  what  "  equi- 
nox "  meant,  and  this  article  would  never  have 
been  written.  Take  that,  Mr.  Flexner! 

While  finding  "  equinox,"  however,  I  came  across 
the  word  "  equilibrium,"  which  is  the  word  before 
you  come  to  "  equinox,"  and  I  became  quite  absorbed 
in  what  it  had  to  say  on  the  matter.  There  were  a 
great  many  things  stated  there  that  I  had  never 
dreamed  before,  even  in  my  wildest  vagaries  on  the 
subject  of  equilibrium.  For  instance,  did  you  know 
that  if  you  cover  the  head  of  a  bird,  "  as  in  hood- 
ing a  falcon  "  (do  you  remember  the  good  old  days 
when  you  used  to  run  away  from  school  to  hood  fal- 
cons?) the  bird  is  deprived  of  the  power  of  volun- 
tary movement?  Just  think  of  that,  deprived  of 
the  power  of  voluntary  movement  simply  because  its 
head  is  covered! 

And,  as  if  this  were  not  enough,  it  says  that  the 
same  thing  holds  true  of  a  fish!  If  you  should  ever, 
on  account  of  a  personal  grudge,  want  to  get  the  bet- 
ter of  a  fish,  just  sneak  up  to  him  on  some  pretext 
[203] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

or  other  and  suddenly  cover  its  eyes  with  a  cloth, 
and  there  you  have  it,  helpless  and  unable  to  move. 
You  may  then  insult  it,  and  it  can  do  nothing  but 
tremble  with  rage. 

It  is  little  practical  things  like  this  that  you  pick 
up  in  reading  a  good  reference  book,  things  that  you 
would  never  get  in  ten  years  at  college. 

For  instance,  take  the  word  "  equites,"  which  fol- 
lows "  equinox  "  in  the  encyclopedia.  What  do  you 
know  about  equites,  Mr.  Businessman?  Of  course, 
you  remember  in  a  vague  way  that  they  were  Ro- 
man horsemen  or  something,  but,  in  the  broader 
sense  of  the  word,  could  you  have  told  that  the  term 
"  equites  "  came,  in  the  time  of  Gaius  Gracchus,  to 
mean  any  one  who  had  four  hundred  thousand 
sesterces?  No,  I  thought  not.  And  yet  that  is  a 
point  which  is  apt  to  come  up  any  day  at  the  office. 
A  customer  from  St.  Paul  might  come  in  and,  of 
course,  you  would  take  him  out  to  lunch,  hoping  to 
land  a  big  order.  Where  would  you  be  if  his  hobby 
should  happen  to  be  "  equites  "?  And  if  he  should 
come  out  in  the  middle  of  the  conversation  with 
"  By  the  way,  do  you  remember  how  many  sesterces 
it  was  necessary  to  have  during  the  administration 
of  Gaius  Gracchus  in  order  to  belong  to  the 
Equites?  "  if  you  could  snap  right  back  at  him 
with  "  Four  hundred  thousand,  I  believe,"  the  or- 
[204] 


HAIL,  VERNAL  EQUINOX! 

der  would  be  assured.  And  if,  in  addition,  you  could 
volunteer  the  information  that  an  excellent  account 
of  the  family  life  of  the  Equites  could  be  found 
in  Mommsen's  "  Romisches  Staatsrecht"  Vol.  3, 
your  customer  would  probably  not  only  sign  up  for 


If  you  could  snap  right  back  at  him  with  'Four  hundred 
thousand,  I  believe,'  the  order  would  be  assured." 


a  ten-year  contract,  but  would  insist  on  paying  for 
the  lunch. 

But,  of  course,  this  has  practically  nothing  to  do 
with  Spring,  or,  as  the  boys  call  it,  the  "  vernal 
equinox."  The  vernal  equinox  is  a  serious  matter. 
In  fact,  I  think  I  may  say  without  violating  any 
confidence,  that  it  is  the  initial  point  from  which  the 
right  ascensions  and  the  longitudes  of  the  heavenly 
[205] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

bodies  are  measured.  This  statement  will  probably 
bring  down  a  storm  of  ridicule  on  my  head,  but 
look  at  how  Fulton  was  ridiculed. 

In  fact,  I  might  go  even  further  and  say  that  the 
way  to  seek  out  Spring  is  not  to  trail  along  with  the 
poets  and  essayists  into  the  woods  and  fields  and 
stand  about  in  the  mud  until  a  half-clothed  bird 
comes  out  and  peeps.  If  you  really  want  to  be  in 
on  the  official  advent  of  Spring,  you  may  sit  in  a 
nice  warm  observatory  and,  entirely  free  from  head- 
colds,  proceed  with  the  following  simple  course: 

Take  first  the  conception  of  a  fictitious  point 
which  we  shall  call,  for  fun,  the  Mean  Equinox. 
This  Mean  Equinox  moves  at  a  nearly  uniform  rate, 
slowly  varying  from  century  to  century. 

Now  here  comes  the  trick  of  the  thing.  The  Mean 
Equinox  is  merely  a  decoy,  and,  once  you  have 
determined  it,  you  shift  suddenly  to  the  True 
Equinox  which  you  can  tell,  according  to  Professor 
A.  M.  Clerk's  treatise  on  the  subject,  because  it 
moves  around  the  Mean  Equinox  in  a  period  equal 
to  that  of  the  moon's  nodes.  Now  all  you  have  to 
do  is  to  find  out  what  the  moon's  nodes  are  (isn't 
it  funny  that  you  can  be  as  familiar  with  an  ob- 
ject as  you  are  with  the  moon  and  see  it  almost 
every  night,  and  yet  never  know  that  it  has  even  one 
node,  not  to  mention  nodes?)  and  then  find  out  how 
[2063 


HAIL,  VERNAL  EQUINOX! 


"On  the  subject  of  spring's 

arrival  intuition  may  be  led 

astray." 

fast  they  move.  This  done  and  you  have  discov- 
ered the  Vernal  Equinox,  or  Spring,  and  without 
spilling  a  dactyl. 

How  much  simpler  this  is  than  the  old,  romantic 
[207] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

.way  of  determining  when  Spring  had  come!  A  poet 
has  to  depend  on  his  intuition  for  information,  and, 
on  the  subject  of  Spring's  arrival,  intuition  may  be 
led  astray  by  any  number  of  things.  You  may  be 
sitting  over  one  of  those  radiators  which  are  con- 
cealed under  window-seats,  for  instance,  and  before 
you  are  aware  of  it  feel  what  you  take  to  be  the  first 
flush  of  Spring  creeping  over  you.  It  would  be  ob- 
viously premature  to  go  out  and  write  a  poem  on 
Youth  and  Love  and  Young  Onions  on  the  strength 
of  that. 

I  once  heard  of  a  young  man  who  in  November 
discovered  that  he  had  an  intellectual  attachment 
for  a  certain  young  woman  and  felt  that  married 
life  with  her  would  be  without  doubt  a  success.  But 
he  could  never  work  himself  up  into  sufficient  emo- 
tional enthusiasm  to  present  the  proposition  to  her 
in  phrases  that  he  knew  she  had  been  accustomed  to 
receive  from  other  suitors.  He  knew  that  she 
wouldn't  respond  to  a  proposal  of  marriage  couched 
in  terms  of  a  real  estate  transaction.  Yet  such  were 
the  only  ones  that  he  felt  himself  capable  of  at 
the  moment  under  the  prevailing  weather  conditions. 
So,  knowing  something  of  biology,  he  packed  his  lit- 
tle bag  and  rented  an  alcove  in  a  nearby  green-house, 
where  he  basked  in  the  intensified  sun-warmth  and 
odor  of  young  tube  roses,  until  with  a  cry,  he 
[208] 


HAIL,  VERNAL  EQUINOX  I 

smashed  the  glass  which  separated  him  from  his 
heart's  desire  and  tore  around  the  corner  to  her 
house,  dashing  in  the  back  door  and  flinging  him- 
self at  her  feet  as  she  was  whipping  some  cream, 


"  Spring." 

and  there  poured  forth  such  a  torrent  of  ardent  sen- 
timents that  there  was  really  nothing  that  the  poor 
girl  could  do  but  marry  him  that  afternoon. 

In  fact,  if  you  want  to  speak  astronomically 
(some  people  do),  you  may  define  Spring  even  more 
definitely.  Since  we  are  all  here  together,  and  good 
friends,  let  us  take  the  center  of  the  earth  as  origin, 
and,  once  we  have  done  this,  the  most  natural  fun- 
damental axis  is,  obviously,  the  earth's  rotation.  The 
fundamental  plane  perpendicular  to  it  is  the  plane 
of  the  equator.  That  goes  without  saying. 
[209] 


OF  ALL  THINGS! 

Now,  here  we  go !  Coordinates  referred  to  in  this 
system  are  termed  equatorial,  and  I  think  that  you 
will  agree  with  me  that  nothing  could  be  fairer  than 
that.  Very  well,  then.  Since  this  is  so,  we  may 
define  Spring  by  the  following  geometric  represen- 
tation in  which  the  angle  ZOP,  made  by  the  radius 
vector  with  the  fundamental  plane,  shows  a  spring- 
like tendency. 

This  drawing  we  may  truthfully  entitle  "  Spring," 
and  while  it  hasn't  perhaps  the  color  found  in  Bot- 
ticelli's painting  of  the  same  name,  yet  it  just  as 
truthfully  represents  Spring  in  these  parts  as  do 
the  unstable  sort  of  ladies  in  the  more  famous  pic- 
ture. 

I  only  wish  that  I  had  more  space  in  which  to 
tell  what  my  heart  is  full  of  in  connection  with  this 
subject.  I  really  have  only  just  begun. 


T2TO] 


TABLOID   EDITIONS 


THE  AMERICAN  MAGAZINE 
What  I  Have  Made  Myself  Learn  About  You 

Being  An  Account  of  How  One  Business  Man  Made  the 
Little  Things  Count.    Do  You? 

MY  business  (rubber  goods)  was  in  a  bad  way. 
Somehow  I  couldn't  seem  to  make  it  return 
enough  to  pay  my  income  tax  with.  My  wife  and  I 
were  frankly  upset. 

At  last  one  morning  she  came  to  me  and  said: 
"  Fred,  the  baby  will  soon  be  seven  months  old  and 
will  have  to  have  some  sort  of  vocational  training. 
What  are  we  to  do?" 

That  night  was  the  bluest  night  I  have  ever  spent. 
I  thought  that  the  end  had  come.  Then,  suddenly, 
the  thought  struck  me:  "  Why  not  try  character- 
selling?  » 

This  may  sound  foolish  to  you.  That  is  because  it 
is  foolish.  But  it  did  the  trick. 

I  began  to  sell  my  personality.  Every  man  that 
came  into  my  store  I  took  aside  and  showed  him 
different  moods.  First,  I  would  tell  him  a  funny 
story,  to  prove  to  him  that  I  was  more  than  a  mere 
business  automaton.  Then  I  would  relate  a  pathetic 
incident  I  had  seen  on  the  street  a  week  or  two  ago. 
This  disclosed  my  heart.  Then  I  did  a  fragment  of 
[213] 


TABLOID  EDITIONS 

a  bare-foot  dance  and  sketched  a  caricature  of  Lloyd 
George,  to  let  him  see  that  I  was  a  man  of  the  world. 
After  this,  I  was  ready  to  sell  him  what  he  came  in 
for,  and  he  would  go  away  carrying  a  very  definite 
impression  of  my  personal  characteristics — and  some 
of  my  goods,  in  a  bundle. 

A  week  of  selling  rubber-goods  in  this  manner,  and 
I  was  on  the  vaudeville  stage,  earning  $250  a  week. 
How  much  do  you  earn? 


Interesting  People 
A  Man  Who  Made  Good  With  Newts 

SOME  day,  if  you  ever  happen  to  be  in  Little 
Falls,  turn  to  your  right  and  you  will  see  a  pros- 
perous-looking establishment  run  by  Ira  S.  Whip, 
known  throughout  Little  Falls  as  the  newt  king. 
Starting  in  with  practically  nothing  but  two  con- 
genial newts,  Mr.  Whip  has,  in  the  past  ten  years, 
raised  no  less  than  4,000  of  these  little  lizard-like 
animals,  all  of  which  had  to  be  thrown  away,  as 
there  is  practically  no  market  for  pet  newts  except 
for  incidental  roles  in  gold-fish  tanks.  But  Mr. 
Whip  did  what  he  set  out  to  do,  and  that  counts  for 
a  lot  in  this  life.  Can  you  say  as  much? 
[214] 


THE  AMERICAN  MAGAZINE 


The  Man  Who  Made  Good 
The  story  of  a  man  who  made  good 

T  DRRIE  WETMORE  sat  disconsolately  in  the 
•  ^  fountain  in  Madison  Square  Park.  He  was 
lonely.  He  was  a  failure.  .  .  .  Yes,  he  was.  Don't 
contradict  me.  He  was  a  terrible  failure.  And,  as 
I  said  before,  early  in  this  story,  he  was  lonely. 

"  I  have  fallen  down  on  the  job,"  he  murmured  to 
Admiral  Farragut's  statue.  "  I  have  not  made  good." 

Suddenly  a  kind  hand  rested  on  his  shoulder.  He 
turned  to  face  the  pansy-trainer,  who  keeps  the 
flower-beds  in  the  Park  in  touch  with  the  seasons. 

"  Don't  give  in,  my  boy,"  said  the  old  man.  "  Re- 
member the  words  of  Henley,  who  instituted  the 
famous  Henley  Regatta  and  so  made  a  name  for 
himself:  '  I  am  the  master  of  my  Fate.  I  am  the 
Captain  of  my  Soul.'  " 

"  By  George,"  murmured  Lorrie  to  the  statue  of 
Salmon  P.  Chase,  "  I  can  make  good,  and  I  will  make 
good!" 

And,  with  these  words,  he  climbed  out  of  the 
fountain  and  made  his  way  resolutely  across  the 
square  to  the  great  store  of  Marshall  Field  and 
Co.  (Advt.) 

In  seven  weeks  he  was  a  member  of  the  firm. 
[215] 


TABLOID  EDITIONS 

Are  You  Between  the  Ages  of  7  and  94? 

If  so,  what  this  eminent  growth  specialist  says  here  applies 
directly  to  you  and  to  your  family 

EVERY  man,  woman  and  child  between  the  ages 
of  7  and  94  is  going  through  a  process  of 
growth  or  metamorphosis,  whether  they  know  it  or 
not.  Are  you  making  the  most  of  this  opportunity 
which  is  coming  to  you  (if  your  age  falls  within  the 
magic  circle  given  above)  every  day  of  your  life? 
Do  you  realize  that,  during  this  crucial  period,  you 
have  it  in  your  power  to  make  what  you  will  of  your- 
self, provided  only  that  you  know  how  to  go  about 
it  and  make  no  false  steps? 

As  you  grow  from  day  to  day,  either  mentally, 
morally,  or  physically,  you  can  say  to  yourself,  on 
awakening  in  the  morning: 

"  To-day  I  will  develop.  I  will  grow  bigger,  either 
mentally,  morally  or  physically.  Maybe,  if  it  is  a 
nice,  warm  day,  I  will  grow  in  all  three  ways  at 
once." 

And,  sure  enough,  when  evening  finds  you  return- 
ing home  from  the  work  of  the  day,  it  will  also  find 
you  in  some  way  changed  from  the  person  you  were 
in  the  morning,  either  through  the  shedding  of  the 
dry  epidermis  from  the  backs  of  your  hands  (which, 
according  to  one  of  Nature's  most  wonderful  proc- 
[216] 


THE  AMERICAN  MAGAZINE 

esses,  is  replaced  by  new  epidermis  as  soon  as  the 
old  is  gone),  or  through  the  addition  of  a  fraction 
of  an  inch  to  your  height  or  girth,  or  through  some 
other  of  the  inscrutable  alchemies  of  Nature. 

Think  this  over  as  you  go  to  work,  to-day,  and 
see  if  it  doesn't  tell  you  something  about  your 
problem. 


How  I  Put  Myself  on  the  Map 

IT  was  seven  o'clock  at  night  when  I  first  struck 
New  York.  I  had  come  from  a  Middle  Western 
town  to  make  my  fortune  as  a  writer,  and  I  was 
already  discouraged.  I  knew  no  one  in  the  Big  City, 
and  had  been  counting  on  my  membership  in  the 
National  Geographic  Society  to  find  me  friends 
among  my  fellow-members  in  town.  But  I  soon  dis- 
covered that  the  fraternity  spirit  in  the  East  was 
much  less  cordial  than  in  my  home  district,  and  I 
realized,  too  late,  that  I  was  all  alone. 

With  a  few  coins  that  my  father  had  slipped  into 
my  hand  as  I  left  home,  I  engaged  a  tiny  suite  at 
the  St.  Regis  and  there  set  about  my  writing. 

The  first  10,000  manuscripts  which  I  sent  out,  I 

now  have.    (I  am  at  present  working  them  over  into 

a  serial  for  the  Saturday  Evening  Post  weekly,  from 

which  I  expect  to  make  $2  5,000) .    But  that  is  beside 

[217] 


TABLOID  EDITIONS 

the  point.  For  the  purposes  of  the  present  narrative, 
I  was  a  failure.  The  manager  of  the  hotel  was 
pressing  me  for  my  rent,  which  was  already  several 
hours  overdue.  I  had  not  tipped  the  chamber-maid 
since  breakfast.  I  sat  looking  out  at  my  window, 
staring  at  the  squalid  wall  of  the  Hotel  Ritz.  I  had 
met  New  York  face  to  face — and  I  had  lost. 

No,  not  lost!  There  was  still  one  chance  left. 
I  sat  down  and,  with  feverish  haste,  wrote  out  a 
glowing  account  of  my  failure.  I  spared  no  detail 
of  my  degradation,  even  to  taking  fruit  from  the 
hotel  table  to  my  room. 

Then  I  began  to  fabricate.  I  told  how  I  had 
overcome  all  these  handicaps  and  had  made  a  suc- 
cess of  myself.  I  lied.  I  said  that  I  was  now  draw- 
ing down  $200,000  a  year,  but  that  I  had  never  for- 
gotten my  old  friends.  It  was  a  good  yarn,  but  it 
took  me  a  long  while  to  make  it  up.  And  when,  at 
last,  it  was  ready,  I  sent  it  to  the  American  Magazine. 

This  is  it! 


How  Insane  Are  You? 

T?OLLOWING  is  a  test  used  in  all  State  Hospitals 
JL  to  determine  the  fitness  of  the  inmates  for  occa- 
sional shore  leave.  Try  it  on  yourself  and  see  where 
you  get  off. 

[218] 


THE  AMERICAN  MAGAZINE 


TEST  No.  i 

If  you  really  are  the  reincarnation  of  Learning, 
write  something  here  .  .  .  but  if  you  are  being 
hounded  by  a  lot  of  relatives  whom  you  dislike,  ring 
and  walk  in.  Then,  granting  all  this,  how  does  it 
come  about  that  you,  a  member  of  the  Interstate 
Commerce  Commission,  wear  no  collar?  .  .  .  Ha, 
ha,  we  caught  you  there!  But  otherwise,  write  any 
letter  beginning  with  w  in  this  space.  Yes,  there  is 
the  space, — what's  the  matter  with  you?  Go  back 
and  look  again.  .  .  .  You  win.  Now,  in  spite  of 
what  the  neighbors  say,  give  three  reasons  for  not 
giving  three  reasons  why  this  proves  that  you  are 
sane,  or,  as  the  case  may  be. 


[219] 


HARPER'S  MAGAZINE 
Through  the  Dobrudja  with  Gun  and  Camera 

THERE  was  a  heavy  mist  falling  as  we  left 
Ilanlac,  rendering  the  cozbars  (native  doblacs) 
doubly  indistinguishable.  This  was  unfortunate,  as 
we  had  planned  on  taking  many  photographs,  some 
of  which  are  reproduced  here. 

Our  party  consisted  of  seven  members  of  the  So- 
ciety: Molwinch,  young  Houghbotham,  Capt. 
Ramp,  and  myself,  together  with  fourteen  native 
barbudos  (luksni  who  are  under  the  draft  age),  a 
boat's  crew,  two  helpers,  and  some  potted  tongue. 
Lieut.  Furbearing,  the  Society's  press-agent,  had 
sailed  earlier  in  the  week,  and  was  to  join  us  at 
Curtea  de  Argesh. 

Before  us,  as  we  progressed,  lay  the  Tecuci,  shim- 
mering in  the  reflected  light  of  the  sun  (sun).  They 
were  named  by  their  discoverer,  Joao  Galatz,  after 
his  uncle,  whose  name  was  Wurgle,  or,  as  he  was 
known  among  the  natives,  "Wurgle."  From  that 
time  (1808)  until  1898,  no  automobile  was  ever  seen 
on  one  of  the  Tecuci,  although  many  of  the  inhabi- 
[220] 


HARPER'S  MAGAZINE 

tants  subsisted  entirely  on  what  we  call  "  cottage- 
cheese." 

The  weevils  of  this  district  (Curculionida)  are 
remarkable  for  their  lack  of  poise.  We  saw  several 
of  them,  just  at  sundown,  when,  according  to  an  old 
native  legend,  the  weevil  comes  out  to  defy  the  God 
of  Acor,  his  ancient  enemy,  and  never,  not  even  in 
Castanheira,  have  I  seen  weevils  more  embarrassed 
than  those  upon  whom  we  came  suddenly  at  a  bend 
in  the  Selch  River. 

Early  morning  found  us  filing  up  the  Buzeau  Val- 
ley, with  the  gun-bearers  and  bus-boys  in  single-file 
behind  us,  and  a  picturesque  lot  they  were,  too,  with 
their  lisle  socks  and  queer  patch-pockets.  In  tak- 
ing a  picture  of  them,  I  walked  backward  into  the 
Buzeau  River,  which  delayed  the  party,  as  I  had, 
in  my  bag,  the  key  with  which  the  potted  tongue 
cans  were  to  be  opened. 

We  were  fortunate  enough  to  catch  several  male 
puffins,  which  were  so  ingenuous  as  to  eat  the  carpet- 
tacks  we  offered  them.  The  puffin  (Thalassidroma 
buleverii),  is  easily  distinguishable  from  the  more 
effete  robin  of  America  because  the  two  birds  are 
similar  in  no  essential  points.  This  makes  it  conven- 
ient for  the  naturalist,  who  might  otherwise  get  them 
mixed.  Puffins  are  hunted  principally  for  their  com- 
panionable qualities,  a  domesticated  puffin  being 


TABLOID  EDITIONS 

held  the  equal — if  not  quite — of  the  average 
Dobrudjan  housewife  in  many  respects,  such  as,  for 
instance,  self-respect. 

It  was  late  in  the  afternoon  of  the  third  day,  when 
we  finally  reached  Dimbovitza,  and  the  cool  Hernia 
was  indeed  refreshing.  It  had  been,  we  one  and  all 
agreed,  a  most  interesting  trip,  and  we  vowed  that 
we  should  not  forget  our  Three  Days  in  the 
Dobrudja. 

Dead  Leaves 

"    A   IN'T  you   got  them   dishes   done   up  yet, 

j[\     Irma?" 

A  petulant  voice  from  what,  in  Central  New  Eng- 
land, is  called  the  "  sittin'  room,"  penetrated  the  cool 
silence  of  the  farm-house  kitchen.  Irma  Hathaway 
passed  her  hand  heavily  before  her  eyes. 

"  Yes,  Ma,"  she  replied  wearily,  as  she  threw  a 
cup  at  the  steel  engraving  of  "  The  Return  of  the 
Mayflower  "  which  hung  on  the  kitchen  wall.  She 
wondered  when  she  would  die. 

A  cold  wind  blew  along  the  corridor  which  con- 
nected the  kitchen  with  the  wood-shed.  Then,  as  if 
disgruntled,  it  blew  back  again,  like  a  man  returning 
to  his  room  after  a  fresh  handkerchief.  Irma 
shuddered.  It  was  all  so  inexplicably  depressing. 

For  eighteen  years  the  sun  had  never  been  able 

[222] 


HARPER'S  MAGAZINE 

to  shine  in  Bemis  Corners.  God  knows  it  had  tried. 
But  there  had  always  been  something  imponderable, 
something  monstrously  bleak,  which  had  thrown 
itself,  like  a  great  cloak,  between  the  warm  light  of 
that  body  and  the  grim  reality  of  Bemis  Corners. 

"If  Eben  had  only  known,"  thought  Irma,  and 
buried  her  face  in  the  soapy  water. 

Some  one  entered  the  room  from  the  wood-shed, 
stamping  the  snow  from  his  boots.  She  knew,  with- 
out looking  up,  that  it  was  Ira. 

"  Why  hev  you  come?  "  she  said  softly,  lifting  her 
moist  eyes  to  him.  It  was  not  Ira.  It  was  the  hired 
man.  She  sobbed  pitifully  and  leaped  upon  the 
roller-towel  which  hung  on  the  door,  pulling  it  round 
and  round  like  a  captive  squirrel  in  a  revolving  cage. 

"  It  ain't  no  use,"  she  moaned. 

And,  through  the  cadavers  of  the  apple-trees  in 
the  orchard  behind  the  house,  there  rattled  a  wind 
from  the  sea,  the  sea  to  which  men  go  down  in 
ships  never  to  return,  telling  of  sorrow  and  all  that 
sort  of  thing. 

"  Fate,"  some  people  call  it. 

To  Irma  Hathaway  it  was  all  the  same. 


'[2231 


TABLOID  EDITIONS 

June,  July,  August 

rULIPS,  crocuses  and  chard, 
And  the  wax  bean 
In  the  back  yard. 

And  the  open  road  to  the  land  of  dreams. 
With  the  heavy  swirl 
Of  the  singing  streams. 
Oh!  boy! 


Unpublished  Letters  of  Mark  Twain 

With  a  foreword  by  Albert  Bigelow  Paine  * 
FOREWORD 

THIS  letter  from  Mark  Twain  to  Mr.  Horace  J. 
Borrow  of  Hartford  has  recently  been  called 
to  my  attention  by  a  niece  of  Mr.  Sorrow's  who  now 
lives  in  Glastonbury.  I  have  no  reason  to  believe 
that  the  lady  is  a  charlatan,  in  fact,  I  have  often 
heard  Mark  Twain  speak  of  Mr.  Borrow  in  the 
highest  terms. 


*  The  complete  works  of  Mark  Twain,  with  complete  forewords  by 
Mr.  Paine  are,  oddly  enough,  published  by  Harper  and  Bros,  who, 
oddly  enough,  also  publish  this  magazine.  We  celebrate  this  coinci- 
dence by  offering  the  complete  set  to  our  readers  on  easy  and  friendly 

[224] 


HARPER'S  MAGAZINE 

Mr.  Horace  J.  Borrow 

Hartford,  Connecticut 

Dear  Mr.  Borrow:  Enclosed  find  check  for  ten 
dollars  ($10)  in  payment  of  my  annual  dues  for  the 
year  1891-2. 

Yours  truly, 

(Signed)  S.  L.  CLEMENS. 


Highways  and  By- Ways  in  Old  Fall  River 

THE  chance  visitor  to  Fall  River  may  be  said, 
like  the  old  fisherman  in  "  Bartholomew  Fair," 
to  have  "  seen  half  the  world,  without  tasting  its 
savor."  Wandering  down  the  Main  Street,  with  its 
clanging  trolley-cars  and  noisy  drays,  one  wonders 
(as,  indeed,  one  may  well  wonder),  if  all  this  is  a 
manifestation  so  much  of  Fall  River  as  it  is  of  that 
for  which  Fall  River  stands. 

Frankly,  I  do  not  know. 

But  there  is  something  in  the  air,  something  in- 
effable in  the  swirl  of  the  smoke  from  the  towering 
stacks,  which  sings,  to  the  rhythm  of  the  clashing 
shuttles  and  humming  looms,  of  a  day  when  old 
gentlemen  in  belted  raglans  and  cloth-topped  boots 
strolled  through  these  streets,  bearing  with  them  the 
legend  of  mutability.  Perhaps  "  mutability  "  is  too 
strong  a  word.  Fall  Riverians  would  think  so. 
[225] 


TABLOID  EDITIONS 

And  the  old  Fall  River  Line!  What  memories 
does  that  name  not  awaken  in  the  minds  of  globe- 
trotters? Or,  rather,  what  memories  does  it  awaken? 
William  Lloyd  Garrison  is  said  to  have  remarked 
upon  one  occasion  to  Benjamin  Butler  that  one  of  the 
most  grateful  features  of  Fall  River  was  the  night- 
boat  for  New  York.  To  which  Butler  is  reported  to 
have  replied:  "  But,  my  dear  Lloyd,  there  is  no 
night-boat  to  New  York,  and  there  won't  be  until 
along  about  1875  or  even  later.  So  your  funny 
crack,  in  its  essential  detail,  falls  flat." 

But,  regardless  of  all  this,  the  fact  remains  that 
Fall  River  is  Fall  River,  and  that  it  is  within  easy 
motoring  distance  of  Newport,  which  offers  our  art 
department  countless  opportunities  for  charming 
illustrations. 


The  Editor's  Drawer 

LITTLE  Bobby,  aged  five,  saying  his  prayers, 
had  come  to  that  most  critical  of  diplomatic 
crises:   the  naming  of  relatives  to  be  blessed. 

"  Why  don't  I  ask  God  to  bless  Aunt  Mabel?  "  he 
queried,  looking  up  with  a  roguish  twinkle  in  his  blue 
eyes. 

"  But  you  do,  Bobby,"  answered  his  mother. 
"  So  I  do,"  was  his  prompt  reply. 
[226] 


HARPER'S  MAGAZINE 


T     ITTLE  Willy,  aged  seven,  was  asked  by  his 
•   ^  teacher  to  define  the  word  "  confuse." 

"  '  Confuse '  is  what  my  daddy  says  when  he  looks 
at  his  watch,"  said  Willy.  The  teacher  never  asked 
that  question  again.  At  least,  not  of  Willy. 


T  ITTLE  Gertrude,  aged  three,  was  saying  her 
•  ^  prayers.  "  Is  God  everywhere?  "  she  asked. 

"Yes,  dear,  everywhere/'  answered  her  mother. 

"  Everywhere?  "  she  persisted. 

"  Yes,  dear,  everywhere"  repeated  her  mother,  all 
unsuspecting. 

"Then  He  must  be  like  Uncle  Ned,"  said  the 
little  tot. 

"  Why,  Gertrude,  what  makes  you  say  that?  " 

"  Because  I  heard  Daddy  say  that  Uncle  Ned  was 
everywhere,"  was  the  astounding  reply. 


[227] 


THE  SATURDAY  EVENING  POST 

THE  LAST  MATCH 
BY  ROY  COMFORT  ASHURST 

SLOWLY  the  girl  in  the  green  hat  approached  the 
swinging  door  of  the  hotel. 
She  was  thinking. 

A  man  more  versed  in  the  ways  of  womankind 
than  Ned  Pillsbury  might,  perhaps,  have  perceived 
that  she  was  also  glancing  surreptitiously  upwards 
through  the  dark  fringe  of  lashes  which  veiled  her 
brown  gypsy  eyes,  but  Ned  was  not  a  trained  ob- 
server in  such  matters.  To  him,  as  he  sat  in  the 
large,  roomy  leather  chair  in  the  lobby,  the  only 
reaction  was 

(Continued  on  page  49) 


ARE  YOU  SURE  OF  YOUR  CRANK-SHAFT? 

The  answer  to  this  question  is  the  answer  to  the 
peace  of  mind  with  which  you  operate  your  motor. 
Whether  you  are  the  operator  of  an  automobile,  or 
one  of  those  intrepid  spirits  to  whom  the  world-war 
has  given  the  vision  of  flying  through  the  air  at 
[228] 


THE  SATURDAY  EVENING  POST 

175  miles  an  hour,  you  need  to  give  pause  and  say  to 
yourself: 

"Just  how  much  faith  can  I  put  in  my  crank- 
shaft? » 

And  if  it  is  a  Zimco  crank-shaft,  made  in  the  fac- 
tory of  a  thousand  sky-lights,  you  may  be  sure  that 
it  will  stand  the  test. 

Zimco  crank-shafts  have  that  indefinable  quality 
which  gives  them  personality  among  crank-shafts. 
You  know  a  Zimco  when  you  see  one  and  you  feel 
that  it  is  an  old  friend.  It  does  everything  but  speak. 
And  that  its  host  of  friends  do  for  it. 

Let  us  send  you  free  our  handsome  little  booklet 
on  "  After-the- War-Problems." 


(Continued  from  page  8) 

one  of  amazement  that  there  could  be  such  a  beautiful  person 
alive  in  this  generation. 

Ned  was  a  young  man  of  great  possibilities,  but  few  proba- 
bilities. Born  in  the  confusion  of  an  up-state  city,  and  edu- 
cated in  the  hub-bub  of  a  large  college,  on  whose  foot-ball 
team  he  had  distinguished  himself  in  the  position  of  left-half- 
back, he  had  never  been  so  fortunate  as  to  receive  that  quiet 
instruction  in  dark  brown  eyelashes  and  their  potentialities 
which  has  been  found  to  be  so  highly  essential  to  the  equipment 
(Continued  on  page  107) 


INTRODUCING  THE  y-TON  GARGANTUA 
TRUCK 

This  important  announcement  is  made  by  the 
Gargantua  Company  with  a  full  realization  of  its 

[229] 


TABLOID  EDITIONS 

significance.  We  realize  that  we  are  creating  a  new 
thing  in  trucks. 

The  Gargantua  combines  all  the  qualities  of  the 
truck  with  the  conveniences  of  a  Fall  River  bbat. 
Its  transmission  system  has  been  called  "The  Queen 
of  Transmissions."  The  efficacy  of  its  bull-pinions 
in  the  tractor  attachment  has  been  the  subject  of 
enthusiastic  praise  from  bull-pinion  experts  on  all 
continents. 

The  Gargantua  is  the  result  of  a  dream.  Henry 
L.  McFern  (now  president  of  the  Gargantua  Co.), 
was  the  dreamer.  Mr.  McFern  wanted  something 
that  would  revolutionize  the  truck  business,  and  yet 
still  be  a  truck.  He  gave  it  the  thought  of  all  his 
waking  hours.  His  friends  called  him  a  "  dreamer," 
but  Henry  McFern  only  smiled.  When  first  he 
brought  out  the  model  of  the  Gargantua  it  was 
called  "  McFern's  Folly,"  but  Henry  McFern  only 
smiled  the  more.  And  when  the  time  came  for  the 
test,  it  was  seen  that  the  "  dreamer  "  of  South  Bend 
had  given  the  world  a  new  Idea. 

(Continued  from  page  49) 

of  a  man  of  the  world  to-day.  He  knew  that  women  were 
strange  creatures,  for  this  popular  superstition  reaches  even 
to  the  recesses  of  the  most  exclusive  of  male  retreats,  but 
further  than  that  he  was  uninformed.  He  had,  it  is  true,  like 
many  another  young  man,  felt  the  influence  of  certain  pairs 
of  blue  eyes 

(Continued  on  page  113) 

[230] 


THE  SATURDAY  EVENING  POST 

I  AM  THE  STRENGTH  OF  AGES 

If  I  have  sprung  from  the  depths  of  the  hills. 

|[  Before  the  rivers  were  brought  forth,  or  even 
before  the  green  leaves  in  their  softness  made  the 
landscape,  I  was  your  servant. 

If  From  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  where  men  toil  in 
darknesss,  I  come,  bringing  a  message  of  insuperable 
strength. 

||  From  sun  to  sun  I  meet  and  overcome  the  forces 
of  nature,  brothers  of  mine,  yet  opponents;  kindred, 
yet  foes. 

If  I  am  silent,  but  my  voice  re-echoes  beyond  the 
ends  of  the  earth. 

If  I  am  master,  yet  I  am  slave. 

If  I  am  Woonsocket  Wrought  Iron  Pipe,  "the 
Strongest  in  the  Long  Run."  (Trademark.) 

Send  for  illustrated  booklet  entitled 

"The  Romance  of  Iron  Pipe." 


(Continued  from  page  107) 

which  had  come  into  his  life  during  the  years  when  he  was  in 
susceptible  moods,  but  such  occurrences  were  not  the  result  of 
any  realization  on  his  part  of  their  significance.  They  were 
in  the  same  category  of  physical  phenomena  as  includes  measles 
or  chicken-pox,  for  example, — the  direct  result  of  a  certain 
(Continued  on  page  125) 


TABLOID  EDITIONS 

WHY   WORRY   OVER   CHISEL   TROUBLES? 

"  You've  got  the  right  kind  of  chisel  there.  I  see 
it's  a  Blimco.  I've  always  found  that  Blimco  chisels 
stand  up  longer  under  everyday  usage,  and  I  tell  my 
foremen  to  see  to  it  that  the  men  always  have  their 
Blimcoes  and  no  other.  I  have  tried  the  others,  but 
have  always  come  back  to  the  Blimco.  I  suppose  it 
is  because  the  Blimco  is  made  by  master-workmen, 
supervised  by  experts  and  sold  only  by  dealers  who 
know  the  best  tools.  When  you  see  a  Blimco  in  a 
dealer's  window,  you  may  know  that  that  dealer  is  a 
man  of  discrimination.  The  discriminating  workman 
always  uses  a  Blimco.  '  The  Chisel  of  Distinction.' 
Clip  this  coupon  and  send  it  NOW  for  our  instructive 
booklet  'Chiselling  Prosperity'." 

(Continued  from  page  113) 

temporary  debility  which  renders  the  patient  susceptible  to 
infection. 

.Ned  Pillsbury  was  therefore  somewhat  overcome  by  the 
vision  of  the  girl  with  the  green  hat,  and  suffered  from  that 
feeling  of  pioneering  emotion  which  must  have  affected  Mr. 
Balboa  who,  according  to  the  poet,  stood  "silent  on  a  peak  in 
Darien"  survey- 

(Continued  on  page  140) 

MAKE  YOUR  PISTON-RINGS  WORK  FOR 
YOU 

Why  should  you  persist  in  being  ashamed  of  your 
piston-rings? 

[232] 


THE  SATURDAY  EVENING  POST 

Why  should  you  make  your  wife  and  daughter 
suffer  the  humiliation  which  comes  from  knowing 
that  you  are  using  an  inferior  make? 

"  Emancipator  "  Piston-Rings  cost  more  than  ordi- 
nary piston-rings,  but  they  are  worth  it.  They  are 
worth  more  even  than  we  ask. 

What  would  it  mean  to  you  to  know  that  you  were 
not  losing  steam  power  because  of  a  faulty  piston- 
ring?  Wouldn't  it  be  worth  a  few  extra  dollars? 

Napoleon  once  said  that  an  army  marches  on  its 
stomach. 

If  this  has  any  relation  to  piston-rings,  we  fail  to 
see  it.  But  it  has  as  much  relation  to  piston-rings 
as  a  matter  of  price  does  when  steam  economy  is  at 
stake. 

"  Emancipator "  Piston-Rings  bring  twice  the 
power  with  one-half  the  trouble.  That's  why  we  call 
them  "  Emancipator." 

Ask  your  grocer  about  "  Emancipators."  He  will 
tell  you  to  ask  your  garage-man.  In  the  meantime, 
let  us  send  you  our  catalog. 


(Continued  from  page  125) 

ing  the  Pacific.  He  was  aware  of  a  strange  exaltation  cours- 
ing through  his  veins,  and  before  he  knew  it,  he  was  on  his 
feet  and  pushing  through  the  revolving  door  in  the  compart- 
ment behind  the  green  hat. 

(Continued  on  page  156) 

[233] 


TABLOID  EDITIONS 

YOU,  MR.  LEATHER-BELTING-USER1 

What  is  your  problem? 

Do  you  wake  up  in  the  morning  with  green  spots 
before  your  eyes?  Are  you  depressed?  Does  the 
thought  of  a  day's  work  with  an  unsatisfactory  belt- 
ing weigh  upon  your  mind,  bringing  on  acidosis, 
hardening  of  the  arteries,  and  a  feeling  of  opposition 
to  the  League  of  Nations? 

If  so,  let  us  tackle  your  problem  for  you. 

We  have  built  up  a  service  department  which 
stands  alone  in  its  field.  For  sixteen  years  we  have 
been  making  it  the  perfect  institution  that  it  is 
to-day. 

Bring  your  belting  troubles  to  Mr.  Henry  W. 
Wurlitz,  who  is  at  the  head  of  our  service  depart- 
ment, and  he  will  set  you  right.  He  will  show  you 
the  way  to  a  Bigger,  Better,  Belting  outlook. 


(Continued  from  page  140) 

"I  beg  your  pardon,"  he  said  softly,  as  they  emerged  on 
the  street,  "but  did  you  drop  this  flask?" 

She  turned  quickly  and   faced  him.     There  was  a  twinkle 
in  her  dark  brown  eyes  as  she  answered  him : 
(To  be  continued) 


[234] 


PURITAN  AND  PAGAN 

BY  ELIZABETH  COBETT 

A  Novel  of  life  in  New  York  Art  and  Theatrical  Circles. 

"Magnificent  women,  women  endowed  beyond  the  ordinary  run 
of  their  sex.  They  are  figures,  personalities.  .  .  .  Mary  Allen 
stands  in  her  book  world  in  much  the  same  position  that  Mary 
Garden  holds  in  our  real  world  .  .  .  this  book  succeeds  com- 
pletely in  fascinating  us." — Boston  Transcript. 

"Captivating  ...  a  novel  of  power  and  subtlety." — New  York 
TimeJ  Review. 

THE  FLYING  BOSUN 

BY  ARTHUR  MASON 
Adventures  on  a  sailing  vessel  and  a  Fiji  Island 

Fiction  based  on  facts. 

"No  imaginary  picture.  There  is  no  illusion  or  sentimentality, 
but  authority  on  every  page  ...  as  a  story  of  the  sea  it  ranks 
with  the  best  of  Jack  London  or  Morgan  Robertson,  and  as  a 
story  of  the  uncanny  it  is  comparable  with  'Dracula'  and  'The 
Master  of  Ballantrae.' " — The  Literary  Review  (New  York 
Evening  Post). 

"We  wish  it  were  longer  ...  a  thing  of  horror,  death  and 
mystery  ...  the  real  thing  as  a  sea  tale." — New  York  Tribune. 

"The  feeling  persists,  that  with  the  exception  of  the  spiritual 
phenomena,  the  whole  dramatic  voyage  actually  occurred." — 
Bookman. 

MEET  MR.  STEGG 

BY  KENNETT  HARRIS 

About  a  genial  and  crafty  bull-whacker  of  the  West 

"Extremely  amusing,  and  sometimes,  owing  to  his  unusual  sym- 
pathy with  his  characters,  he  is  a  great  deal  more  than  amusing." 
— Literary  Review  (New  York  Evening  Post). 

"Brings  back  the  good  old  humor  of  Artemus  Ward,  Bret 
Harte  and  Mark  Twain." — Newark  Evening  News. 

"Harris  has  written  a  masterpiece  of  the  old  time  west." — Cin- 
cinnati Star  Times. 

"Indeed  a  pleasure.  There's  a  depth  of  humanity  about  him,  a 
strength,  and  power  of  observation." — Buffalo  Commercial. 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

19  West  44th  Street  New  York 


WOMEN  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  BALZAC 

BY  JUANITA  H.  FLOYD 

With  portraits 

New  York  Times:  "The  great  romance  of  the  man  who  wrote 
so  many  romances.  .  .  .  His  own  story  was  more  romantic  than 
any  he  wrote." 

New  York  Evening  Post:  "Anything  but  the  book  of  literary 
scavenging  or  scandal  ...  in  no  sense  a  dull  book." 

Boston  Transcript:  "It  is  of  such  stuff  as  this  book  that  the 
history  of  literature  and  the  biography  of  men  of  letters  is 
made." 

Brooklyn  Eagle:  "A  magnificent  idea  ...  the  new  and  ad- 
mirable story  in  which  Miss  Floyd  constitutes  with  unerring 
accuracy  the  splendor  of  Balzac's  genius." 


Two  Volumes  in  "Makers  of  The  Nineteenth  Century" 

CECIL  RHODES 

BY  BASIL  WILLIAMS 

A  portrayal  in  all  his  native  ruggedness  and  simplicity  of  an 
empire  builder  who  did  more  than  anyone  else  to  make  the  Eng- 
lish realize  that  "South  Africa  must  be  not  Boer  or  British  but 
Boer  and  British." 

London  Times:  "He  has  rendered  a  great  service  in  giving 
with  intimate  inside  knowledge  a  contemporary  portrait  of  the 
man  and  a  connected  narrative  of  his  work.  He  tells  the  story 
with  admirable  skill." 

(ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

BY  LORD  CHARNWOOD 

It  is  on  this  book  (already  in  its  eleventh  edition)  that  Drink- 
water  based  his  famous  play.  He  calls  it  "a  masterly  analysis 
of  Lincoln's  character  and  career  and,  it  seems  to  me,  a  model 
of  what  the  historian's  work  should  be." 

The  Nation:  "Not  only  the  portrait,  but  the  philosophy  of  the 
greatest  of  Americans.  It  is  bound  to  take  first  rank  in  the 
literature  of  Lincoln,  and  in  many  respects  may  be  pronounced 
the  best  of  the  biographies." 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

19  West  44th  Street  (vii'ai)  New  York 


THE  OLD  MAN'S  YOUTH  AND 
THE  YOUNG  MAN'S  OLD  AGE 

BY  WILLIAM  DE  MORGAN 

Author  of  "Joseph  Vance,"  "Somehow  Good,"  etc. 

528  pp. 

New  York  Post:  "...  A  unique  product,  but  surprisingly 
good.  .  .  .  The  keen  insight,  the  broad  and  deep  humanity,  the 
understanding,  forgiving  tenderness  of  "Joseph  Vance"  are  still 
warmly  and  vividly  alive  here,  and  the  outstanding  dramatic 
points  in  the  story  have,  perhaps,  greater  possibilities  than  any 
in  his  earlier  novels.  .  .  ." — H.  L.  Pangborn. 

New  York  Times:  ".  .  .  The  love  story  at  the  end  is  per- 
fect. .  .  ."—William  Lyon  Phelps. 

New  York  Sun:  ".  .  .  Shows  his  power  at  its  best  ...  in- 
imitable dialogue — hundreds  of  pages  of  it — remains  as  marked 
as  in  his  famous  earlier  books.  The  power  of  endless,  enriching 
invention  .  .  .  holds  one  to  the  last  page.  .  .  ." 

London  Observer:  ".  .  .  As  complete  in  its  de  Morganism  as 
the  first  ...  it  only  just  misses  being  as  good  as  'Joseph  Vance' 
.  .  .  the  nearest  approach  in  modern  fiction  to  the  ta.k  of  the 
natural  man  and  to  the  movements  of  his  kindlier  impulses  .  .  , 
the  typical  de  Morgan  humor  ...  a  very  full,  real,  and  enter- 
taining picture  of  human  beings  whom  we  love  for  their  friend- 
liness." 

Boston  Transcript:  ".  .  .  Nothing  could  be  more  De  Mor- 
ganesque.  These  reminiscent  pages  .  .  .  will  be  enjoyed  for 
their  manner,  for  their  vivid  impressions  of  the  scenes  and  in- 
cidents of  childhood,  and  for  that  peculiar  quality  which  has 
made  Mr.  De  Morgan  a  law  unto  himself  in  fiction." 

Boston  Post:  ".  .  .  So  filled  with  whimsical  humor  and  sage 
reflections,  so  crowded  with  vivid  personalities,  that  it  is  likely 
to  outlive  other  tales  by  the  author." 

San  Francisco  Bulletin:  ".  .  .  It  is  the  fruit  of  a  fine  intellect 
at  once  creative  and  critical  .  .  .  many  passages  as  fine  as  any- 
thing that  ever  came  from  the  De  Morgan  pen.  .  .  ." 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

19  West  44th  Street  (vi  '21)  New  York 


BY  MARTIN  ANDERSEN  NEXO 

"Certainly  Henry  Holt  and  Company  are  to  be  congratulated 
upon  their  enterprise  in  continuing  to  make  the  work  of  Nexo 
available  for  English-speaking  readers.  .  .  .  No  more  remark- 
able figure  than  Martin  Andersen  Nexo  could  have  been  chosen 
from  the  world  of  contemporary  European  letters." — The  N.  Y. 
Evening  Post. 

DITTE:    GIRL  ALIVE! 

"Ditte:  Girl  Alive"  is  the  poignant  story  of  a  small  Danish 
girl's  fight  against  cold  and  hunger  and  the  forces  of  circum- 
stances, tradition  and  environment.  "It  is  difficult  to  analyze  the 
beauty  Nexo  draws  out  of  the  hard  and  bitter  lives  of  these 
poverty-stricken  people  .  .  .  unlike  most  novelists  who  have 
seriously  considered  the  lives  of  the  very  poor,  without  clouding 
the  issue  with  sentimentality,  he  sees  with  equal  clearness  the 
inextinguishable  capacity  of  joy  and  courage  and  the  harshness 
of  the  lot  to  which  they  are  condemned." — San  Francisco 
Chronicle. 

"In  interest,  in  truth,  in  emotional  power,  Nexo's  new  novel  at 
once  catches  the  splendid  stride  of  the  older  one;  when  Telle' 
was  first  translated  it  was  recognized  as  a  masterpiece,  and  rec- 
ognition of  the  merits  of  'Ditte'  should  be  as  prompt." — The 
N.  Y.  Evening  Post. 
izmo.  333  pages,  Jacket  drawn  by  Rodney  Thomson. 

PELLE,   THE  CONQUEROR 

"The  greatness  of  the  work,  in  all  four  of  its  parts,  is  indubit- 
able. There  is  none  that  gives  so  large  and  well-rounded  a  pic- 
ture of  the  poor  and  their  aspirations.  It  is  permeated  with  the 
local  color  of  Denmark,  of  course,  but  it  is  none  the  less  of  uni- 
versal interest  in  every  chapter.  It  is  great,  again,  as  a  picture  of 
a  commanding  personality,  for  Pelle  is  a  vivid,  interesting,  and 
impressive  creation.  He  is  so  in  the  first  book,  as  a  boy  on  a 
Danish  farm ;  in  the  second,  as  a  wayward  but  able  young  man 
in  a  small  town,  as  yet  unconverted  to  radical  labor  views ;  in  the 
third,  as  a  great  leader  of  workmen;  and  in  the  fourth  book,  as 
a  radical  converted  to  saner  views  and  realizing  his  own  place 
in  society." — The  N.  Y.  Evening  Post. 

"No  one  can  read  'Pelle'  without  feeling  the  momentous  quality 
of  the  story." — Boston  Transcript. 

"Not  since  Tolstoy  has  so  significant,  so  massive  a  contribn- 
tion  to  international  literature  come  from  Continental  Europ€." 
— N.  Y.  Tribune. 

I2tno.  Published  in  two  volumes. 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

19  West  44th  Street  (vii  '21)  New  York 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


AC  A/01/  o?  199 
I 


*  AC  MAY  03  1999 

REC'D  C.L  FEB  2  2  'OC 


315 


UBRARf  OF 
WAL*  DISNEY  STUDIO 


